The purpose of these surveys is to gather information from the collections community regarding your experience incorporating changes into your local collections databases. The goal is to compile and share findings at SPNHC-TDWG 2018 as part of the SPNHC symposium: Challenges for Implementing Collections Data Quality Feedback: synthesizing the community experience. The focus for the […]

Results are now available for this survey, initiated on 7 February 2018, that was intended to elicit information for a stakeholder vision of how to maximize the value of biodiversity collections data for collections management, research and education in the future. BCoN is coordinating the development of this vision in response to requests from the […]

The natural history collections community is invited to provide comments on a draft workshop report about integration, attribution, and value in the web of natural history museum data.  The report is the outcome of a two-day needs assessment workshop held at the University of Kansas in February 2018, to explore the obstacles to data attribution […]

This survey is intended to elicit information for a stakeholder vision of how to maximize the value of biodiversity collections data for collections management, research and education in the future. BCoN is coordinating the development of this vision in response to requests from NSF and others to inform the development of a new funding program […]

An editorial in the January 2018 issue of the journal BioScience highlights the important work that the Biodiversity Collections Network is embarking on during 2018. Notably, organizing meetings and workshops that are intended to help identify and outline potential next steps for continuing a national initiative to digitize and use in research data and images […]

In January 2017, the Biodiversity Collections Network convened a meeting in Washington, DC, to ask approximately 30 representatives from various stakeholder groups to evaluate the community’s collective progress toward the goals and objectives outlined in the Strategic and Implementation Plans for a Network Integrated Biocollections Alliance. The Next Generation Research Working Group participated in this […]

The natural history collections community is invited to provide input on a draft report about community progress toward the goals and objectives outlined in the Strategic and Implementation Plans for NIBA. The report is the outcome of a two-day stakeholder workshop held in Washington, DC in January 2017 by the the Biodiversity Collections Network (BCoN). […]

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 […]

A new opinion piece published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences urges the creation of an IsoBank, a central repository for isotopic data. The article is an outcome a workshop sponsored by the Biodiversity Collections Network, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. An excerpt of the article follows: Stable isotopes […]

Are you interested in incorporating more real data into your undergraduate courses? Natural history collections have been digitizing (the process of converting information into a digital format) their holdings and making them available online, creating a vast resource for biodiversity data that educators can access! Apply now to join the 2017 “Resources for Collections-Based Undergraduate […]