During its first three years, BCoN worked with the community to identify tools and resources needed to improve the community’s capacity to communicate about biodiversity collections. As a result, the American Institute of Biological Sciences launched a new communication-training program. BCoN worked with the Natural Science Collections Alliance and isotopic scientists to inform a new initiative to develop an IsoBank – a database that will link isotopic data with biodiversity data, and other genetic and environmental data, both within the U.S. and internationally. BCoN also planned or participated in three meetings that explored data and informatics education or workforce training needs. A new national initiative, Biodiversity Literacy in Undergraduate Education (BLUE), has emerged from BCoN and has now been funded by the National Science Foundation.
In 2017, BCoN convened a meeting of experts to assess community progress toward the goals and objectives outlined in the implementation plan for a National Integrated Biocollections Alliance. As a result of this meeting, a second workshop with early career researchers will explore novel research uses for digitized collections and associated data.