By: Dr. Libby Ellwood Each year, millions of people flock to natural history museums to see examples of plants, animals, gemstones and more from places around the world. But what those visitors *don’t* get to see are the countless additional specimens behind the scenes. These specimen collections, housed at museums, universities, and other institutions, are an invaluable resource for understanding biodiversity around the world over long spans of time. Yet billions of these specimens lie tucked carefully away in cabinets and shelves, largely inaccessible to all but the few researchers with the means to view these collections in person. This makes the valuable data contained in and on those specimens difficult to search for, compromising their usefulness in research and education.
Oxyscelio longiventris. Credit: Norman Johnson, http://specimage.osu.edu/getImageInfo.html ?image_id=13970 Thankfully, global efforts to digitize specimens are making biodiversity data available to anyone with an Internet connection. And that’s where you come ...
