The Digital Museum: Data Capture and Digitization of MVZ Ancillary Material

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

A grant has been awarded to the University of California at Berkeley, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, under the direction of Dr. C. Moritz to make the extensive ancillary and non-specimen holdings (e.g., field notes, images, sound tapes, historical correspondence) available to scientific researchers, conservation and management agencies, NGO's, and non-traditional users (e.g., historians and artists). This will be accomplished through developing metadata describing them, digitizing the information, and linking the information to the MVZ data model to allow for access through a web interface. These ancillary materials add significant value to the specimens themselves and are important in their own right. In particular, the MVZ collection of field notes (> 91,000 pages) and images (> 14,000 photographs, negatives, and 35mm and lantern slides) provide an important resource for understanding the effects of environmental change over the past century. This project will also support digital capture of the significant collections of bird calls and histological and karyological preparations of MVZ, which are important resources under threat of continuing decay. This effort will enhance the utility and value of specimen records from one of the largest university-based collections of vertebrates in the world. Digitization of field notes and images from the major MVZ surveys of the 1 st half century will facilitate access to this unique information by systematists, ecologists and conservation biologists, and contribute to our understanding of how vertebrates have responded to human-wrought changes in the landscape and what might be done to protect the diversity of California in the face of continuing human pressure. The MVZ data model illustrates the connectivity that is possible across a broad conceptual range of information. As MVZ bring its ancillary collections online, it will better serve its goal as a key provider of information about vertebrate evolution and natural history and about historical distributions of species in western North America. The project also will provide direct training of graduate and undergraduate students in museum science, and the results will support outreach to schools and the conservation management community.