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1. Arctos: Community-driven innovations for managing biodiversity and cultural collections

   https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.12.15.571899  

   Cicero, Carla; Koo, Michelle S; Braker, Emily; Abbott, John; Bloom, David; Campbell, Mariel; Cook, Joseph A; Demboski, John R; Doll, Andrew C; Frederick, Lindsey M; et al (December 2023, bioRxiv)

   Abstract Museum collections house millions of objects and associated data records that document biological and cultural diversity. In recent decades, digitization efforts have greatly increased accessibility to these data, thereby revolutionizing interdisciplinary studies in evolutionary biology, biogeography, epidemiology, cultural change, and human-mediated environmental impacts. Curators and collection managers can make museum data as accessible as possible to scientists and learners by using a collection management system. However, selecting a system can be a challenging task. Here, we describe Arctos, a community solution for managing and accessing collections data for research and education. Specific goals are to: (1) Describe the core elements of Arctos for a broad audience with respect to the biodiversity informatics principles that enable high quality research; (2) Highlight the unique aspects of Arctos; (3) Illustrate Arctos as a model for supporting and enhancing the Digital Extended Specimen; and (4) Emphasize the role of the Arctos community for improving data discovery and enabling cross-disciplinary, integrative studies within a sustainable governance model. In addition to detailing Arctos as both a community of museum professionals and a collection database platform, we discuss how Arctos achieves its richly annotated data by creating a web of knowledge with deep connections between catalog records and derived or associated data. We also highlight the value of Arctos as an educational resource. Finally, we present a financial model of fiscal sponsorship by a non-profit organization, implemented in 2022, to ensure the long-term success and sustainability of Arctos. We attribute Arctos’ longevity of nearly three decades to its core development principles of standardization, flexibility, interdisciplinarity, and connectivity within a nimble development model for addressing novel needs and information types in response to changing technology, workflows, ethical considerations, and regulations. 

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2. Putting U.S. collections on the map: collaborative digitization and innovation

   Bieler, Rüdiger; Bogan, Arthur E; Criales, Maria M; Dietl, Gregory P; Duda_Jr, Tom F; Fuchs, Corinne E; Giribet, G; Goodheart, Jessica A; Leal, José H; Lee, Taehwan; et al (October 2025, The Nautilus)

   Leal, JH; Bieler, R (Ed.)

   Among biocollections, mollusks are a particularly powerful resource for a wide range of studies, including biogeography, conservation, ecology, environmental monitoring, evolutionary biology, and systematics. U.S. mollusk collections are housed in stand-alone natural history museums, at universities, and in a variety of governmental and non-governmental institutions. Differing in their histories, specializations, and uses, they share common needs for long-term development, and collectively contribute to biodiversity knowledge at regional, national, and global scales. Commitment by dedicated staff, collectors, and volunteers, institutional investments, philanthropy, and governmental funding have built and maintained these collections and their support infrastructure. Efforts by the North American malacological collection community since the early 1970s led to coordination in database design but left the data isolated in individual institutions. Collection digitization developed through a combination of individual/institutional initiatives and federally supported projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Advances in digital technology enabled the shift toward nationally and globally unified collections. Networking and collaboration were greatly accelerated by NSF’s Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) program, which created a central coordinating organization (iDigBio) and funded Thematic Collections Network (TCN) projects. One such TCN was developed to mobilize nearly 90% of the known U.S. museum-collections-based data of the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts (Mobilizing Millions of Marine Mollusks of the Eastern Seaboard—ESB). The project, involving 16 museum collections (plus the Smithsonian Institution as federal partner), combines data from approximately 4.5 million specimens collected from the ESB region and makes them available to the TCN portal InvertEBase and other aggregators such as iDigBio and GBIF. In addition to fostering community and expanding the corpus of available digitized mollusk records through new data entry and georeferencing (GEOLocate, CoGe) and standardizing taxonomy, the project drove key innovations for the invertebrate collections community. For instance, it worked with the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) group to create a new Darwin Core standard term, “Vitality”, expanded GEOLocate to support complex geospatial types, integrated global elevation and bathymetric datasets directly into georeferencing workflow, and developed various education and outreach public outreach products. Synthesizing from the 15 following articles with individual histories of ESB-participating mollusk collections, several topics are discussed—such as what defines a “good” mollusk collection in the digital age and the importance of federal support for this national resource. 

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3. Putting U.S. mollusk collections on the map: collaborative digitization and innovation

   Bieler, R; Bogan, A; Criales, M; Dietl, G; Duda, T; Fuchs, C; Giribet, G; Goodheart, J; Leal, J; Lee, T; et al (October 2025, The Nautilus)

   Among biocollections, mollusks are a particularly powerful resource for a wide range of studies, including biogeography, conservation, ecology, environmental monitoring, evolutionary biology, and systematics. U.S. mollusk collections are housed in stand-alone natural history museums, at universities, and in a variety of governmental and non-governmental institutions. Differing in their histories, specializations, and uses, they share common needs for long-term development, and collectively contribute to biodiversity knowledge at regional, national, and global scales. Commitment by dedicated staff, collectors, and volunteers, institutional investments, philanthropy, and governmental funding have built and maintained these collections and their support infrastructure. Efforts by the North American malacological collection community since the early 1970s led to coordination in database design but left the data isolated in individual institutions. Collection digitization developed through a combination of individual/institutional initiatives and federally supported projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Advances in digital technology enabled the shift toward nationally and globally unified collections. Networking and collaboration were greatly accelerated by NSF’s Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) program, which created a central coordinating organization (iDigBio) and funded Thematic Collections Network (TCN) projects. One such TCN was developed to mobilize nearly 90% of the known U.S. museum-collections-based data of the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts (Mobilizing Millions of Marine Mollusks of the Eastern Seaboard—ESB). The project, involving 16 museum collections (plus the Smithsonian Institution as federal partner), combines data from approximately 4.5 million specimens collected from the ESB region and makes them available to the TCN portal InvertEBase and other aggregators such as iDigBio and GBIF. In addition to fostering community and expanding the corpus of available digitized mollusk records through new data entry and georeferencing (GEOLocate, CoGe) and standardizing taxonomy, the project drove key innovations for the invertebrate collections community. For instance, it worked with the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) group to create a new Darwin Core standard term, “Vitality”, expanded GEOLocate to support complex geospatial types, integrated global elevation and bathymetric datasets directly into georeferencing workflow, and developed various education and outreach public outreach products. Synthesizing from the 15 following articles with individual histories of ESB-participating mollusk collections, several topics are discussed—such as what defines a “good” mollusk collection in the digital age and the importance of federal support for this national resource. 

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4. Rapid development and digitization of the Recent mollusk collection at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville

   Slapcinsky, John; Bemis, Amanda; Portell, Roger; Auffenberg, Kurt; Paulay, Gustav (October 2025, The Nautilus)

   The Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) currently houses nearly 580,000 specimen-lots of close to 3 million specimens of recent mollusks. It is one of the largest collections of its type in North America and, except for new donations, its collection data is entirely accessible online. The collection has grown rapidly since its founding in the early 20th century, especially in the past 50 years. While global in scope, the collection is especially strong in material from North and South America, the Caribbean, Madagascar, Pacific Ocean islands, and south Asia. Holdings have been greatly enriched by biodiversity surveys conducted by museum staff and research associates and by acquisition of relinquished institutional and private collections. Field collections often have linked voucher specimens, tissues, sequence data, and digital images. The FLMNH mollusk collection is an important resource for systematics, biogeography, biodiversity studies, and education. 

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5. Increasing the impact of vertebrate scientific collections through 3D imaging: The openVertebrate (oVert) Thematic Collections Network

   https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad120  

   Blackburn, David C.; Boyer, Doug M.; Gray, Jaimi A.; Winchester, Julie; Bates, John M.; Baumgart, Stephanie L.; Braker, Emily; Coldren, Daryl; Conway, Kevin W.; Rabosky, Alison Davis; et al (March 2024, BioScience)

   Abstract The impact of preserved museum specimens is transforming and increasing by three-dimensional (3D) imaging that creates high-fidelity online digital specimens. Through examples from the openVertebrate (oVert) Thematic Collections Network, we describe how we created a digitization community dedicated to the shared vision of making 3D data of specimens available and the impact of these data on a broad audience of scientists, students, teachers, artists, and more. High-fidelity digital 3D models allow people from multiple communities to simultaneously access and use scientific specimens. Based on our multiyear, multi-institution project, we identify significant technological and social hurdles that remain for fully realizing the potential impact of digital 3D specimens. 

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