The Collections Digitization Project in MACN

ZERMOGLIO P.F., M.L. BARONE, M.F. D'JONSILES, M.S. DE MAJO, M.D. EZCURRA, V.D. FADEL, M O. TRUCCO, M. VIGLINO, D. RODRÍGUEZ & M.J. RAMÍREZ.

Buenos Aires

Congreso; GBIF 18 th Governing Board Meeting; 2011

Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales, Bernardino Rivadavia

The MACN’s Collections Digitization Project began in 2008 as the  first  initiative  of  the  kind  for  the  institution.  Its  main purpose is to convert registers of specimens held in the museum from  paper  to  digital  format  and  to  make  the  information available for the rest of the scientific community. For achieving that  task,  every  year  interns  from  Buenos  Aires  University  are contracted  and  are  assigned  to  a  certain  collection,  in  which they work entering data using the application Aurora (Box 1). The  organization  of  the  project  includes  a  general coordinator, an informatics responsible, a processes coordinator and interns from the Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Buenos  Aires  University.  Interns  are  assigned  to  collections depending  on  their  academic  background  and  interests.  Their work  consists  mainly  of  digitazing  the  specimen  information contained either in individual labels or in accession books. They count with the continuous advice and guidance of the curators from each collection.The type of information that is digitized includes taxonomic, collector, date, geographical and biological data, and is ordered and  entered  into  the  database  following  the  international standards. Revisions are made periodically to detect and correct mistakes  that  could  have  been  committed  during  the transcription process. Interns  also  dedicate  time  to  georeferencing  localities,  so that specimens can be placed precisely in space. The protocols used for this are a modification of those from MaNIS-HerpNET, with  tutorials  developed  by  members  of  the  project.    These documents  are  periodically  reviewed  to  accommodate  new necessities that appear during this task. Google Earth is used for drawing  polygons  containing  the  desired  localities,  and  the point-radius method is used to calculate the extension and error of  the  measurements,  using  the  MaNIS  georeferencing calculator.  The  checking  of  administrative  divisions  is  made using DIVA-GIS.Communication among all members of this project is actively promoted,  as  it  is  seen  as  an  efficient  way  of  enhancing individual capabilities and improving group performance. In this respect,  web  pages,  containing  protocols  and  other  useful information,  and  e-mail  groups  were  developed  and  are continuously updated.