Abstract Detail

Celebrating 15 years of SERNEC: Where we've been, where we are, and where we are going

Denslow, Michael [1], Brown, Herrick [2], Murrell, Zack [3].

Managing a large-scale digitization project: trials and tribulations.

The SouthEast Regional Network of Expertise and Collections (SERNEC) is a consortium of over 230 herbaria in 13 states in the Southeast USA. The name reflects our network of herbaria, associated data as well as our collective expertise in broad aspects biodiversity research. The group first started with various meetings around the southeast USA. Our first major funding came in the form of an NSF supported Research Coordination Network (RCN) which provided support from 2005 - 2011 for training and idea exchange among our curators. More recently NSF supported a Thematic Collection Network (TCN) for SERNEC, with funding from 2014-2018 for 94 herbaria and six other technology partners. This has provided us with the technical infrastructure to capture herbarium images and transfer them to various platforms, where they can be transcribed and georeferenced. This effort includes Symbiota, GEOLocate, Notes from Nature, Specify, CyVerse and iDigBio as critical components of our very active “data pipeline”. In addition, our data portal currently contains over 4.6 million specimen records.
In this talk, we will cover how we developed a communications plan, the technical infrastructure and trained personnel to carry out this ambitious and highly collaborative project. We will also focus on the challenges and opportunities of using shared infrastructure such as image servers and a citizen science transcription platform for such a large and diverse project. Lastly, we will give an overview of our lessons learned and all of the infrastructure that we developed which can be leveraged by other projects.

Related Links:
SERNEC Home
SERNEC Data Portal

1 - Appalachian State University, SERNEC, ASU Box 32027, Boone, NC, 28608, United States
2 - 718 South Maple Street, Columbia, SC, 29205, United States
3 - Department Of Biology, Appalachian State University, 572 Rivers Street, Boone, NC, 28608, United States

Keywords:
herbarium
biodiversity informatics.

Presentation Type: Colloquium Presentations
Session: CO05, Celebrating 15 years of SERNEC:Where we've been, where we are and where we are going
Location: Tucson H/Starr Pass
Date: Tuesday, July 30th, 2019
Time: 8:30 AM
Number: CO05002
Abstract ID:892
Candidate for Awards:None