Museums hold the storehouse of specimens required to understand biodiversity across the planet. These archives serve as historical snapshots of biodiversity in one area, at one time. While this information has historically remained isolated, recent efforts to digitize collections have produced a bridge between these rich troves, combining collections into a larger pool that researchers can tap to tackle deep questions about global biodiversity.
"Datasets from thousands of museums across the globe are increasingly digitized and accessible in publicly searchable, online data portals," said Mason Heberling, assistant curator of botany, co-chair of collections at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and first author on the study. "We are increasingly swimming in high volumes of data, but accessing and making sense of these data can be the limiting challenge."
Heberling consulted experts at the Digital Sciences, Humanities, Arts: Research and Publishing (dSHARP) coalition at Carnegie Mellon University. A team of faculty and staff in University Libraries and the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, dSHARP is dedicated to advancing research and teaching involving digital tools, methods and sources.
Heberlin's collaboration with dSHARP resulted in a paper titled "Data integration enables global biodiversity synthesis" published in the February issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"This is a great example of how digital humanities can collaborate with the sciences," said study co-author Scott Weingart, program director for the Digital Humanities at CMU. He said collections are often based on time, place or populations. "This [database aggregates] all of the information together so biodiversity science can make broader and more global claims."
