[Nhcoll-l] 'Collections for the 21st Century' Symposium

[Page,Larry M]

Dear Colleague:  NSF’s Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections Program (ADBC) is in its third year.  The primary goal of this wide-reaching program is to create online access to data from all of our nation’s natural history collections through the portal at iDigBio (www.idigbio.org<http://www.idigbio.org/>), where data are available for >11,000,000 specimen records and the number is increasing weekly.

This massive amount of data provides new opportunities for previously intractable research requiring large amounts of spatial and temporal data, provides new information for educational and outreach initiatives and – importantly – provides opportunities to demonstrate the extraordinary value of our natural history collections.

To review how we can maximize the value of this national effort, a symposium, 'Collections for the 21st Century,' sponsored by iDigBio and the Natural Science Collections Alliance (NSCA) will be held on May 5-6, 2014, at the University of Florida.  It will emphasize the value of collections and address questions relevant to the national digitization effort, such as:

What data are available or could be made available?

How are the data being used?  What research questions can we address?

Have we demonstrated the power of collections data to answer big-science questions?

How can the data improve our institutions’ educational and outreach activities?

How do we translate our accomplishments into more public and private support for our collections?

The symposium will feature a full day of talks on May 5 and a half–day of talks on May 6.  Attached to this email is a list of speakers and titles.  Field trips to nearby natural areas will be held on the afternoon of May 6 for those who are interested, as will opportunities to work in collections or tour the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Registration for the symposium is free, but travel-related expenses are the responsibility of each participant.  Information on accommodations at a discounted rate will be provided when you register.  Attendance will be limited to 80 persons so please register soon if you plan to attend.  Register online at: https://www.idigbio.org/content/collections-21st-century.

Please feel free to forward this email to colleagues whom you think may be interested in attending.

Thank you!  Hope to see you at the symposium in May!  Larry

I apologize to those of you who have received this email on other listservs.
*******************************
Larry M. Page, Curator of Fishes & iDigBio Project Director
Dickinson Hall
Florida Museum of Natural History
1659 Museum Road
Gainesville, FL 32611-7800
352-273-1952 (office)
352-256-1889 (cell)
iDigBio
<http://www.idigbio.org/>ALL CATFISH SPECIES PROJECT
<http://clade.acnatsci.org/allcatfish/>
All CYPRINIFORMES SPECIES PROJECT<http://www.cypriniformes.org/>

[cid:93F51078-1975-411F-B06F-2AEAA43E7162]
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