Corresponding authors: Holly Little (
Academic editor:
Many digitization-focused talks at recent Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC,
In the rapidly changing digital collections landscape, the collection staff find their roles evolving. Technical discussions in meeting symposia and some demos showcasing informatics and technological advances may often cover both expertise and background knowledge the audience lacks. In addition, where there are challenges in informatics literacy within the collections community, one can also observe a breakdown in understanding and communication of overlapping informatics-related goals and efforts between collections staff and their informatics counterparts and administration.
In order to facilitate overall understanding of the biodiversity informatics landscape, we developed the
The presentations were distributed across three main themes: 1) what is natural history biodiversity informatics? 2) what are some of the current relevant projects? and 3) how to get involved. We were able to gather feedback during the course day, throughout the SPNHC 2017 meeting, and in a post-short-course survey. Here we share an assessment of the course, the feedback received as it relates to skills and workflow assessments and needs, possible future iterations of this short course, and a better understanding of the informatics literacy skills landscape of the SPNHC community. We seek your input on this topic for the 2018 TDWG and SPNHC joint meeting and for TDWG's future role in this capacity building effort.
Holly Little
The authors would like to thank the many people and organizations who contributed to the content of this course. This includes: The Smithsonian Department of Paleobiology (course concept)*, The Natural History Museum (NHM), The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, The Denver Botanic Garden (DBG), Center for Biological Research Collections - Indiana University, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences - Indiana University, Chicago Academy of Sciences - Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, The Field Museum, VertNet, Invertebrate Paleontology - University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, University of Wisconsin - Wisconsin Insect Research Collection, Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC)