Digitization of the Collections

Insect drawer from Hymenoptera collection

In the context of scientific collections, digitisation is the process of making object related data from collections (labels, images, inventory books) and collection-based research available by means of a digital catalogue.

The digitization is described in a strategy (publicly available on gitlab and here). The strategy describes the

• objectives and scope,
• procedures,
• infrastructure,
• workflows

of the digitization.

Screenshot from DiversityCollection showing a voucher entry with data from the German Barcode of Life project including geographic reference, image and genetic barcode information.

Images from the fish collection in the Digital Asset Management System easyDB

The digital catalogue used at ZFMK is the Diversity Workbench framework. It consists of different modules like Diversity Collection for managing occurrence data (collection event, organisms, storage location, methods, persons, etc.), Taxon Names for the creation of taxonomic lists, Agents for all person-related information and References for literature, e.g. species description references.

A number of additional programs developed by Biodiversity Informatics section ensure that the data remain integer (e.g. personal names are routinely retained according to the DSGVO) or can be delivered to public web portals (e.g. GBIF).

The digital catalogue is publicly accessible via the ZFMK Collection Portal at https://collections.zfmk.de.