With regards to the post about Museum's needing to advertise their collections more is there no central repository, or many repositories (for instance at the Field Museum) for scientists to view collections online? I'm a Software Engineer just wondering if there is an actual need for this.
There is such a resource! iDigBio is a major multi-year initiative funded by the National Science Foundation to digitize natural history museum collections in the US. They’re making progress, but it’s difficult to prioritize what sort of materials ought to be uploaded first – and most of the information currently uploaded is the scientific research data associated with the voucher specimen. There’s no search function for common names, nor is there an easy entry point into the system for non-scientists.
That being said, anyone can search the portal! Currently, there are more than 44 million specimen records uploaded - 12.3 million of those come with images or other media records.
This is what comes up on the first page when you search for Kingdom: animaliaScientific Name: Hymenoptera It returns more than 45,000+ data records, and about 100 images.
As I mentioned above, most of the information and specimen data is currently being utilized by researchers who are interested in knowing which specimens are located at other museums. Before, they’d have to contact the collection’s manager, who would have to look up the record in a card catalog – obviously that takes a lot of time when you’re getting dozens of requests for loans of specimens every day.
iDigBio is still a relatively new project, and in the next few years will work on mainstreaming some of the functionality and help non-scientists understand more of its potential, and create resources for teachers and students.
