INVESTIGADORES
EZCURRA Martin Daniel
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
The Collections Digitization Project in MACN
Autor/es:
ZERMOGLIO, P. F.; BARONE, M. L.; D'JONSILES, M. F.; DE MAJO, M. S.; EZCURRA, M. D.; FADEL, V. D.; GUALA, M. E.; LUNA, M. C.; MARFIL, M. F.; TRUCCO, O.; VIGLINO, M.; RODRIGUEZ, D.; RAMIREZ, M. J.
Lugar:
Buenos Aires
Reunión:
Jornada; GBIF Secretariat GB18; 2011
Resumen:
The MACN?s Collections Digitization Project began in 2008 asthe first initiative of the kind for the institution. Its mainpurpose is to convert registers of specimens held in the museumfrom paper to digital format and to make the informationavailable for the rest of the scientific community. For achievingthat task, every year interns from Buenos Aires University arecontracted and are assigned to a certain collection, in whichthey work entering data using the application Aurora (Box 1).The organization of the project includes a generalcoordinator, an informatics responsible, a processes coordinatorand interns from the Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales,Buenos Aires University. Interns are assigned to collectionsdepending on their academic background and interests. Theirwork consists mainly of digitazing the specimen informationcontained either in individual labels or in accession books. Theycount with the continuous advice and guidance of the curatorsfrom each collection.The type of information that is digitized includes taxonomic,collector, date, geographical and biological data, and is orderedand entered into the database following the internationalstandards. Revisions are made periodically to detect and correctmistakes that could have been committed during thetranscription process.Interns also dedicate time to georeferencing localities, sothat specimens can be placed precisely in space. The protocolsused for this are a modification of those from MaNIS-HerpNET,with tutorials developed by members of the project. Thesedocuments are periodically reviewed to accommodate newnecessities that appear during this task. Google Earth is used fordrawing polygons containing the desired localities, and thepoint-radius method is used to calculate the extension and errorof the measurements, using the MaNIS georeferencingcalculator. The checking of administrative divisions is madeusing DIVA-GIS.Communication among all members of this project is activelypromoted, as it is seen as an efficient way of enhancingindividual capabilities and improving group performance. In thisrespect, web pages, containing protocols and other usefulinformation, and e-mail groups were developed and arecontinuously updated.