Abstract Detail

Systematics

Mast, Austin [1], Riccardi, Greg [2], Bruhn, Robert [2], Ellwood, Elizabeth [1].

Building Crowdsourcing Campaigns for Biocollections using Biospex.

Biospex is an online basecamp for launching, advertising, and managing targeted efforts to digitize biodiversity specimens. Biospex provides tools for curators, amateur enthusiast groups, and others to mint a webpage for a project, package specimens into one or a series of digitization "expeditions" associated with the project, launch the expeditions at crowdsourcing tools (e.g., Notes from Nature), widely recruit others to participate, follow crowdsourcing progress, process crowdsourced contributions, and download results in formats easily ingested at specimen databases. In the end, the project leaders can download the new data AND the data and provenance information goes back to the biocollections that curate the physical specimens. We will illustrate the functionality of Biospex using the WeDigFLPlants project, a collaboration between southeastern U.S. herbaria, the Florida Native Plant Society, and other Florida-focused amateur-enthusiast groups to transcribe >50,000 herbarium specimens collected in Florida and held at >50 herbaria. WeDigFLPlants is a WeDigBio Interest Group designed to maintain the momentum of the 4-day WeDigBio event throughout the year.

Related Links:
Biospex
WeDigBio
Notes from Nature

1 - Florida State University, Department Of Biological Science, 319 Stadium Drive, Tallahassee, FL, 32306, USA
2 - Florida State University, School of Information, Tallahassee, FL, 32306, USA

Keywords:
Biospex
iDigBio
WeDigBio
citizen science
Crowdsourcing
Notes From Nature
biodiversity informatics
Herbaria
WeDigFLPlants.

Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 47, Systematic Methods, Herbarium Digitization & Floristics
Location: 203/Savannah International Trade and Convention Center
Date: Wednesday, August 3rd, 2016
Time: 2:45 PM
Number: 47006
Abstract ID:198
Candidate for Awards:None