Last weekend, my boyfriend and I were working on his property in the mountains in Transylvania County. He is a sawyer, and as such, he is a wood hoarder. He started flipping over logs to see if he could find any cool critters, and I heard him yell out. I came over to check it out, expecting to see a poisonous snake of some sort just because of his yell. But instead we found this, a green salamander. He yelled because he’s never seen a salamander like it before, even after 20 years of living in the mountains. There’s a reason for that. Apparently they are rare to find across their range, and they are endangered in North Carolina. Pretty neat. You never know what you’ll find if you look. I like his little face so here you go, Instagram. #cuteamphibians #salamander #greensalamander #wnc #appalachia
Guest post by Laura Brenskelle We’re all emerging professionals here. Have you ever thought about being an emerging professional in a new field? This poses a unique set of challenges. I completed m...
I wrote this month’s blog post for Cracking the Collections, the blog for the Emerging Professionals Group of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections! Check it out!
The integration of data from two or more domains is required for addressing many fundamental scientific questions and understanding how to mitigate challenges affecting humanity and our planet. In March 2015, AIBS convened a workshop that brought together more than two dozen experts in genetics, genomics and metagenomics, biology, systematics, taxonomy, ecology, bio- and ecoinformatics, and cyberinfrastructure development. The workshop was co-chaired by Dr. Corinna Gries, Lead Information Manager at the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin, who joins us to discuss the challenge of complex data integration and AIBS's upcoming Council Meeting on Addressing Biological Informatics Workforce Needs. Read the workshop report on complex data integration. Learn more about the upcoming AIBS Council Meeting. Read the AIBS workshop report on Changing Practices in Data Publication.
I’ve been totally MIA, I know, but I graduated with my M.S. on Saturday! It feels wonderful to be done.
Also, I will be writing the January post for Cracking the Collections, the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections Emerging Professionals Group blog so keep your eyes peeled for that!
PLANT-COLLECTING has long attracted mavericks with a thirst for adventure. In Borneo in the 1960s John Wood, now at Oxford University, had to shave leeches off his...
You know you’re a museum person when the sight of people moving a whale skull down the hallway warrants only a brief pause in conversation to say, “Oh look.”
Then the conversation resumes, and you only remember this incident hours later and think, “Wow, my life is weird.” Museums are wonderful places.
Precious cargo. Transported a desiccated rabbit (and other fossils) from the lab to main campus today so we can use it in our fossilization and taphonomy labs this week!
Why did I choose my thesis topic? And who cares about biodiversity informatics?
Sorry, I took a bit of a hiatus. I’m sure you know how things can be at the beginning of a new semester. I wasn’t expecting to be a TA this fall until about a week before the semester started, and I made a bit of an interesting foray into working in retail that ended quite abruptly, haha. But that’s a story for another time.
So, digitization! I left off hopefully having effectively explained natural history museums and why they matter. Digitization has become a modern trend in museums, libraries, and archives in order to expand access to the documents, artifacts, and specimens held in these institutions. In natural history collections, digitization can have varying degrees of meaning depending on who you’re talking to. For some, digitization refers to the process of imaging specimens. For others, myself included, I use the term ‘digitization’ broadly to refer to the movement of specimen data (including images and other forms of 3D rendering because this is also specimen data in my mind) to a digital format in a database that can then be shared via the internet with people all over the world.
Digitizing natural history collections can benefit lots of different types of users, but the three biggest ones that come to mind (and the three that are frequently used to explain why this process is important) are researchers, educators, and students. Personally, I love the idea of ‘democratizing science’ and making things more transparent for the interested public to peruse, but realistically, the people using online resources to view and assess specimens probably fall into one of these three user groups.
So, now we can finally start getting into my M.S. project and why I chose the topic that I chose. I’m pretty sure I’ve already explained this, but I took the entire first year of my M.S. to decide what I wanted to do. I chose not to settle for projects that didn’t thrill me. One reason that I am glad I took this time is because it took me about that long to wrap my brain around (granted, I had minimal help in this process) collection management, museum specimens, digitization, the various natural history digitization initiatives & programs that are ongoing in the U.S. and across the globe right now, and how all of these different pieces fit together.
Digitization in the broad sense requires, at the ground floor, for data to be entered into a database. I came to realize that this is generally done by collection managers, university students, and volunteers that work in collections. These collection databases then ship their data off to portals like VertNet, iDigBio, and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), where it can be accessed by anyone and used for research or educational purposes.
After taking some classes at the School of Information here in database management and digital libraries, I decided to see how well collection managers of natural history collections are able to manage these databases. How much training do they receive? How do they train students and volunteers who also work in their database? I recently learned that I basically studied the socio-technological system of how data is managed in natural history collections. Or, in simpler terms, I looked at how people in natural history collections work with databases to get their data into digital formats. I learned that this is not just a matter of training and education, but that there are other factors that impact what can be done in these institutions in order to digitize their data.
Ok, well, that’s great, Laura, but why the heck do we care? Well, let me tell you why this matters. We are digitizing these data for research and educational use, yes? Researchers can use data from portals to attain larger datasets than they could have before by physically visiting various collections. Teachers can use these portals to have their students do ‘hands-on’ projects where they perform their own research on the Earth’s biota and how it changes with time. Ideally, educators can tailor projects using these websites to serve most grade-levels.
If we intend to use these projects to assess changes in the Earth’s biota spatially and temporally and to educate the next generation of scientists, then don’t we want these data in the portals to be correct? Isn’t that the underlying assumption in all future uses of biodiversity informatics? What if I told you that it’s not right? What if I told you that it’s not complete and does not represent every specimen we know about in all collections across the globe? What if I told you that these data come from sources where the people entering them don’t have much, if any, database management training? Doesn’t that change your level of comfort when it comes to using these databases to do science?
Ultimately, my goal is to help solve as many socio-technological and just plain technological problems associated with biodiversity informatics as I can. Because I believe that, if done properly, these portals and other tools that biodiversity informatics has to offer could be invaluable resources not just for the study of biology, but for future conservation and policy efforts. And given that we are experiencing a biodiversity crisis right now, it is increasingly vital for us to use every resource we have at our disposal to figure out how humans can be stewards of the environment and not a main contributor to its demise.
Why natural history collections matter (and why I love them)
I am interested in natural history collections. Natural history collections come in different flavors, depending on what type of specimens are in your collection, but I would argue that they are all essentially the same. For those who don’t know, natural history collections contain preserved voucher specimens that have been collected in nature. When you visit a museum that has collections, the things you see on exhibit are only a small fraction of the museum’s total holdings. A specimen can be anything - a fish, a plant, a fossil, an insect, a mollusk shell, a bird, etc. Preservation methods vary depending on what type of organism you’re trying to preserve, and in some cases, what part of the organism is deemed relevant for a collector’s purposes. For example, a mouse could be prepared and preserved either as a skeleton, a skin, or even an alcohol-preserved specimen, if that’s what you wanted. Increasingly, natural history collections are also starting to store a new kind of collection - tissue samples containing genetic material. It is also common for natural history collections to amass archives that are related to their specimens - field notes from collectors, correspondence, permits, publications, and other related documents.
But you might be wondering - why? Why are people collecting all of these dead animals and stuff about these dead animals? Natural history collections have been around since the 16th century. They began originally as curiosity cabinets; wealthy people would display their collections of exotic and bizarre natural curiosities in their homes as a status symbol. As time went on, the use of these objects shifted from luxury to science. When you collect a specific organism at a specific place at a specific time, you create a voucher specimen. You are proving physical proof that this thing existed in this time at this place, and this is an invaluable asset to biodiversity science. Every specimen can be seen as a data point in enabling us to better understand the spatial and temporal distribution of organisms on Earth. Some people wonder why natural history collections may contain hundreds of specimens from a single species. It is important to track population distributions through time, and to collect various individuals who might offer insight on the biological variation in a species at a given time and place. Think about it this way - you and your friends all look very different, but you are all members of the species Homo sapiens. The same kind of variation exists in other species, but in some cases, it is only noticed by specialized scientists who have been trained to pick up on these small details.
As an example, you can see from looking at this field of bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis) in Burnet County, Texas that they all roughly look the same (and there are tons of them). However, in this field, there is some variation. I promise. And to prove it to you, I included a picture I took of a few white bluebonnets that I spotted in this field. Variation doesn’t always come in the form of color difference, but this is an easy example that demonstrates variation in a population.
As time inevitably trudges on, all we have to provide us with information about past biodiversity are natural history specimens and their associated data. There are an estimated 2-3 billion specimens in natural history museums worldwide. That is all the information we will ever have about the Earth’s biota in the past. With the exception of discovering new fossil material, you cannot go backwards in time and do biological fieldwork. That’s one main reason natural history collections are so very important now and that collecting in today’s modern world is still vital.
If you would like more information about how these collections are used to benefit society, I will direct you to a video Emily Graslie (ehmeegee) , Chief Curiosity Correspondent at the Field Museum, made called “Where’d you get all those dead animals?”
Looking ahead: if you follow news or trends in museums, libraries, or archives at all, you’ve probably heard this buzzword - digitization. Different people use it to mean different things. It depends on what setting you’re working in, whether it is a museum, library, or archive, and what goal you’re trying to achieve by digitizing. I will talk more about digitization in the context of natural history museums for my next post. I am trying to set up an introduction of why I chose the M.S. project that I chose while not overwhelming you guys with too much information at once. Hopefully someone out there is reading these posts and finds them interesting! And of course, feel free to ask me questions!
I started graduate school in August 2013 in a brand new city. I think it’s common for new graduate students to have ‘imposter syndrome’, where you feel like you aren’t smart enough to be here and don’t know how you got here. I was no exception. In fact, I think my inferiority complex was amplified by the fact that I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do for my M.S. project when I showed up. I had a vague idea of the direction I wanted to go, but that was it. And it just seemed to me like my peers had their paths all figured out.
Let me just tell you - that feeling was complete bull. After two years living in this grad school world, I can tell you that pretty much no one has it figured out. If they say they do, they’re probably lying. Without going into too much detail, I can tell you that out of my cohort of three, I am now the furthest along with completing my thesis. So don’t underestimate yourself. You can always pull out a win, sometimes when you least expect it. ;)
Anyway, back to the story. I spent almost the entire first year of grad school rejecting projects that my adviser suggested and digging deeper into my own ideas and interests. And I don’t regret it one bit. At the end of my last year (and I do mean at the end), I came up with a project that I felt excited about. You know, I’ve heard people say that your Master’s is supposed to be an adviser-driven project that just provides you with new skills. Maybe that works for some people, but I am the kind of person who wants to feel invested in what I am doing. I didn’t want to spend 2 years on a project I didn’t care about. So I had to fight (tooth and nail sometimes) in order to get to do this project. Do not be mistaken - this was a very frustrating and challenging process for me. But I think that, in the end, I came out stronger.
So, what did I do? Actually, I think a more detailed description of my project and the thinking behind it is a good idea for another post on another day. I think this post should be devoted to my own personal journey through this process. So stay tuned if you’re interested in what I did. Long story short - my project is about database practices in natural history collections. It sounds boring, but I don’t really think it is. My results told me less about databases, and more about the people, funding problems, and the lofty expectations we’re placing on natural history collections when we talk about digitization. It’s a little complicated, which is why I think it’d make for a better separate blog post.
Once I had my project figured out, I tried my best to hit the ground running. I was IRB-certified and had my project approved by the end of that summer. If you’re unfamiliar, there are certain hoops you have to jump through in order to do human subjects research, and the Institutional Review Board at each university is responsible for approving these research projects. I completed all my data collection by January 2015. Right now, I am working on edits to appease my Master’s committee. I am planning to have it done in a month or two at the latest, and then start reformatting it to submit for publication.
Maybe this is unique to me, but I presented the heck out of this project. I presented talks about it at an iDigBio workshop and two different conferences. I gave two final talks about my project for grad school requirements, one of which was an hour long. I know that some researchers don’t want to present their work until it is finished and they have wonderful results to share. That is not me. I enjoy talking out problems with people who might have valuable input, and so I presented talks about my project at every stage of the process. I also found that this whole process made my fear of public speaking pretty much disappear. It’s a great feeling to stand up in front of people, talk about a project you know like the back of your hand, and to receive good, encouraging feedback. I didn’t gain confidence in myself and my project until I had talked about it in front of people outside of my university. So, for any budding academics out there, don’t shy away from giving talks! As long as you practice beforehand, it will just flow out of you when the time comes, and you might be surprised by the feedback you receive. And that’s really the best part.
I met so many wonderful people over the course of this project, and I received so much support from the community. People asked, “Why hasn’t someone done this before?” And they pushed me because they saw the importance in what I was doing, even if I didn’t recognize it yet. This was invaluable to me because I was facing so much adversity in my graduate program.
When I showed up, people actually thought “What is she doing here? She isn’t even interested in paleontology.” The answer is sort of simple, but also sad. If you are interested in natural history museum work, there are not many options for graduate school. And funded opportunities for museum graduate work? Good luck. Most museum studies programs focus on art and history, not science. This leaves people interested in science museums to find other paths. A lot of people I’ve talked to were volunteers who worked their way up. Others went to school for science-related fields, and they did traditional science theses/dissertations. I ended up in a paleontology program doing something completely different because there was nowhere else for me to go, and I managed to find a few sympathetic professors here. It is sad when students ask me at conferences for advice on where to apply, or if they could come here and do what I’ve done. The answer is I don’t have any suggestions at this point, and I frankly don’t feel comfortable suggesting anyone take the path that I took because it was hard. I am grateful to some of my fellow graduate students who were supportive of me. I am about 1000% sure that I would’ve given up if it hadn’t been for them. That being said, I do have hope for the future. I think this can be changed, with time. In fact, one of the reasons I’m thinking about pursuing a PhD is to make it easier for people like me in the future. I think graduate school can be an amazing, life-changing opportunity, but it is really difficult when you’re in an environment where you feel like it’s you vs. the world.
I suppose the takeaway from this post is that, if you want something bad enough, you can make it happen. You might have to fight like hell, but you can do it. And eventually, it will pay off. People will notice. And if you feel like you want to give up, reach out to your support system - or heck, even me! - to help build you back up so you can keep on trudging. If there is a cause you deeply believe in, you have to chase it because if you don’t, who will?
My love for museums started in undergrad, but my love for nature goes back a lot farther than that. As a kid, I grew up playing outside in lakes and creeks in suburban Atlanta. My mother would drag us to West Virginia every summer to see her parents, and although I would complain the whole way there, I loved going on ‘nature walks’ (and being the leader, of course), catching bugs and keeping them in my bug barn, and watching hummingbirds flit around the feeders on the porch. From an early age, I wanted to be a marine biologist. I wanted to get my PhD. I wanted to go find giant squid and see them live underwater. Unfortunately for my younger self, I don’t think all of those things will be happening, but I might actually achieve getting a PhD, which actually has been a childhood dream of mine. I’m afraid I’m no marine biologist. I don’t think I could stand to go on a deep sea submersible. The world had other plans for me.
Fast forward. I was an undergraduate at Clemson University studying biological sciences. Even that wasn’t exactly a straight path, but I feel as though that story is a digression from the point I’m trying to make here. So, anyway. When I started my biology major, I had a bit of an inferiority complex. I loved science as a kid, but during high school, I had become insecure and steered clear of AP sciences because they were “too hard” for me. Despite the fact that I made A’s in my honors science courses, I still told my high school chemistry teacher I didn’t think I could handle AP Chemistry. But what I discovered at Clemson was that science isn’t any harder than any other subject. As long as you study and make an effort, these classes aren’t so scary. Granted, I do believe there is a lot to be said for teachers and professors, and that their pedagogical styles have a great influence on the success of their students. But I am digressing again.
In my second to last semester at Clemson, I decided I wanted to volunteer at the tiny natural history museum on campus. Frankly, I had no idea what went on behind the scenes in museums, and I was interested to find out. So, I began working with the curator once a week with two other students to learn about vertebrate specimen preparation. We skinned and skeletonized animals, for those who are not familiar.
I fell in love with this work, without really realizing it at first. The following semester, I was applying to graduate schools, and I had this idea in my head that I wanted to be a paleontologist. I attended the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting to meet with some prospective graduate advisers, and had a bit of an epiphany. I did not want to be a paleontologist, and I wasn’t even sure if I wanted my PhD anymore. I wanted to work in a museum like the curator at Clemson. I wanted to do something exciting where every day was different than the last. I wanted to do something that would make a difference to society. So, I changed my mind, applied to graduate schools for my M.S. instead of a PhD, in order to give myself time to figure out how to prepare myself for my chosen path.
I graduated in December 2012, which means that I still had eight months to kill before I would start graduate school. Heck, I had about three months to kill before I’d even hear back from graduate schools. Luckily, my boyfriend at the time was from Washington, D.C., and I decided that I would volunteer at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in the meantime. From February through early July, I volunteered at the FossiLab at the museum. It was a truly wonderful experience. I met some amazing people, both staff and volunteers at the museum. I learned so much. I met a curator there who is doing amazing things at the intersection of paleontology and technology, and I think that is when the wheels in my head really started to turn. Digital technology has the potential to change everything about museums. It has the ability to make vast scientific collections that are usually locked away for protection and preservation available to the public. This was also when I was introduced to the idea of open access science, which is something I still very much support today. Being at the NMNH was a wonderful intellectual environment for me. I was introduced to ideas that I would not have been otherwise. I really do believe my time spent there set the stage for my M.S. project and what I’m going on to become, and because of this, the Smithsonian will always hold a special place in my heart.
This post has been a bit longer than expected, so I will just say... TO BE CONTINUED! I will post again about my graduate experiences soon, and that will finally conclude my story so far. Then, I think I will use this blog to post relevant news articles, to update my story as it happens, and to post my own professional thoughts on certain topics.
My name is Laura. I am 25 years old. So far, my life has led me down a path I never could have imagined for myself. I am currently nearing finished with my M.S., and as I am contemplating going further to pursue a PhD, I decided that now might be a good time to create a blog to detail my journey so far and the adventures that lie ahead. I am treading into new waters, in a relatively new field that is still taking shape - biodiversity informatics.
I think tonight I will put up a more detailed post of my story so far because setting up this blog and getting the aesthetics right took a bit longer than expected. I will explain the personal experiences that led me down this path prior to graduate school, and I will talk in more detail about my natural history museum adventures and as much as I can about my M.S. thesis, which is in the editing phase and will hopefully be published in the nearish future for anyone and everyone to read.
The purpose of this blog is to inform people about my field, and to hopefully inspire others who are interested in biodiversity informatics, natural history museums, or biodiversity sciences in general. Maybe you don’t even know if you’re interested in biodiversity informatics yet because you’ve never heard of it before! That’s exactly my point.
Have a happy rest of your Monday, and I will be back soon! 💛
