17th Meeting of the GBIF Governing Board, Suwon, Republic of Korea

Global Strategy and Action Plan for Mobilisation of Natural History Collections Data

Vishwas ChavanSenior Communications Officer DIGITGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)

October 2010

GBIF GSAP-NHC Task GroupGBIF GSAP-NHC Task GroupGBIF GSAP-NHC Task GroupGBIF GSAP-NHC Task Group

1. TG commissioned in 2008 Q32. Survey on challenges & concerns to

digitisation3. Report endorsed by GBIF Science

Committee (October 2010)i. Summary of recommendations

ii. The size of universe of collections data: elements for preliminary approach

iii. Results of survey on challenges & concernsiv. Approaches to the prioritisation of digitisationv. Geographical & taxonomic metadata to set priorities in

specimen digitisation

GSAP-NHC: 3 recommendationsGSAP-NHC: 3 recommendationsGSAP-NHC: 3 recommendationsGSAP-NHC: 3 recommendations

1. Discovery: facilitate access to information about non-digital collection resources

2. Digitisation: increase the efficiency of data capture and to enhance data quality

3. Publication: improve & promote global infrastructure to mobilise digitised collections data

GSAP-NHC Recommendation 1: DiscoveryGSAP-NHC Recommendation 1: Discovery

GBIF must facilitate access to information about non-digital collection resources

1. Publicise research potential of collections through metadata• Author & publish metadata• Strengthen metadata publishing infrastructure

2. Assessing the number of un-digitised specimens• determine the size of the holdings of un-

digitised specimens world-wide

GSAP-NHC Recommendation 2: DigitisationGSAP-NHC Recommendation 2: Digitisation

GBIF must work with collections to continue to increase the efficiency of specimen data capture and to enhance data quality

1. Technical measures: • industrialise, technological innovations, QA/QC,

fitness-for-use, data dictionaries

2. Attribution, professional credit, institutional priorities• Data publishing framework, metadata as data

paper, institutional recognitions

3. Funding

GSAP-NHC Recommendation 3: PublicationGSAP-NHC Recommendation 3: Publication

GBIF must continue to improve and promote the global infrastructure used to mobilise digitised collections data

1. Technical measures: hosting environment, persistent identifiers

2. Outreach activities: southern hemisphere collections, small & medium sized collections

3. Political measures: national & thematic demand-driven digitisation strategies