The Collections Digitization Project in MACN

ZERMOGLIO, PAULA F.; BARONE, MARIANA L.; D'JONSILES, MARÍA FERNANDA; DE MAJO, MARÍA SOL; EZCURRA, MARTÍN D.; FADEL, VALENTÍN D.; GUALA, MARIEL E.; LUNA, MARÍA CELESTE; MARFIL, MARÍA FERNANDA; TRUCCO, ORNELA; VIGLINO, MARIANA; RODRÍGUEZ, DANIEL; RAMÍREZ, MARTÍN J.

Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires

Workshop; GBIF 18th Nodes Training Workshop; 2011

Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)

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 cientific 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. 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 DIVAGIS. 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.