[Nhcoll-l] Fw: Join Us Next Week for Biodiversity Media Collections in the Age of Digitization and AI

[Nelson,Gil]

iDigBio is pleased to welcome Mike Webster, professor of neurobiology and behavior and director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library at Cornell University. Macauley Library is a media collection dedicated to capturing and preserving recordings (audio, video, and photos) that capture the behaviors of wild birds and other animals.Mike’s presentation promised to be unique and richly illustrated. Mike is also editor of The Extended Specimen Emerging Frontiers in Collections-Based Ornithological Research, which promoted a broader definition of specimen and set the stage for the evolving Extended Specimen Network.

Register and check out upcoming events here: https://ufl.zoom.us/ze/hub/iDigBio

For past recordings, check out our YouTube!: https://www.youtube.com/@iDigBio/

May 12, 2026: Biodiversity Media Collections in the Age of Digitization and AI (3:00-4:00pm ET)

Speaker: Mike Webster
Abstract: The Macaulay Library and other biodiversity media collections (e.g., iNaturalist) house “media specimens” (photos, videos and audio recordings) that capture the phenotypic traits of individuals, including behavioral traits. Digitization of the Macaulay Collection began well over two decades ago, and today most new assets are coming to us digitally-borne; there are no physical objects. These two factors make the Macaulay collection quite different from many other biological collections, most of which curate physical specimens and began digitization efforts more recently. Yet the lessons learned by the Macaulay digitization efforts can inform those of other collections. We have found that digitization has led to important benefits for our collection and our mission, particularly when combined with machine learning and other AI approaches. These benefits include increased collections growth and accessibility, improved data quality, and new opportunities for research as well as educational outreach. Many of these benefits are agnostic about the specimen type (i.e., media versus physical). At the same time, AI presents new challenges for media collections, requiring new safeguards that we never dreamed would be needed a decade ago. In this workshop I will share some of the benefits and concerns that we have discovered for our collection, discuss how other collections with physical specimens might (or might not) face similar benefits or challenges, and brainstorm about what the future might hold.
Best,
Shyla



   [cid:a3b85afc-d697-4888-aafa-24fdadaedb35] <https://www.ufl.edu/>

Shyla R. Davison, Education and Outreach Coordinator

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio)

University of Florida

Florida Museum of Natural History

Sdavison1 at ufl.edu

[cid:62119a84-de6d-4106-864b-f6a28850d862]<https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/>[cid:1d204b64-b606-45bf-abd1-1166560ca748]<https://www.idigbio.org/>

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