Researchers as digital infrastructure creators: maximising use of digitised specimen data in taxonomic research (SPNHC 2023)
Creators: name: Nicolson, Nicky
name: Lucas, Eve
name: Haston, Elspeth
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2023
Subjects: Plant and fungus systematics and taxonomy
Conservation and biodiversity
Digital curation and preservation

description: Presentation in the symposium "<em>Narrowing the gaps: The role of digital infrastructure in shortening the distance between physical collections and their derivative research products</em>" at the 38th annual Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) conference, held in San Francisco, USA from 28th May - 2nd June 2023. (A video recording of the presentation is available here: https://vimeo.com/828266368) <br> Abstract Following large scale specimen digitisation initiatives, more specimen-oriented activities (such as grouping, annotation, determination) are likely to transition online. We need to develop collaborative prototypes to enable informed discussion and to properly understand the potential of this move. It is important that the changes we make to speed transmission of information do not have any unintended effects which may inhibit valuable contributions. We have been developing a prototype system (https://echinopscis.github.io) to inform discussions between technologists and taxonomic researchers. We propose to discuss topics regarding the transition of activity online with reference to this system, including: What can we learn from the built environment developed in dedicated specimen collection working spaces? These provide a model for how we need to develop virtual working environments to enable researchers to sort and group specimen images. These groupings reflect hypotheses and are valuable data - so we will need to consider what kinds of visibility and stages of release that we would need to support. Expert generated links between specimens such as those between duplicates which share a collecting event or specimens which are co-cited in a treatment could be captured and used to seed the network of relationships necessary to deliver the “digital extended specimen” concept. This has great potential but we will need to understand how to enable the creation of these data without overloading already busy people. How the transition to digital may affect researcher behaviour with specimen artifacts. With physical specimen sheets, researchers are free to make "notes to self" (determinations of the species represented) which remain on the sheet and are subsequently used by others. As we transition to digital working practices, could researchers be inhibited about making these labels immediately world readable? What stages of release might we need to support? The kinds of information network topologies which could best enable the digital curation of the global corpus of botanical specimens. Whilst biodiversity hotspots tend to be in the global south, historical specimen collections are most often held in the global north. We will outline the potential for the use of federated technologies (aka the "fediverse") to help mobilise curation events attached to digitised representations of specimens. Could such a system diversify curation and strengthen local networks of expertise?