Dear Björn,
Likewise we also joined. It was unsuccessful before, did they give any feedback?
I saw from my institution that two VA bids were funded, one on water quality and another related to studies on COVID-19 and other infectious diseases so the competition is very high. Could the feedback received
help us to make this more competitive this time round?
All the best,
Giles
From: cetaf_earthsc@cetaf.simplelists.com <cetaf_earthsc@cetaf.simplelists.com>
On Behalf Of Celia Santos
Sent: 30 April 2021 17:17
To: cetaf_earthsc@cetaf.simplelists.com
Subject: RE: [CETAF_ESG] Digitization of historical specimens / samples & verbatim names
Dear Björn,
Last year our Museum also participated in the VA call with your Krantz project, and we would like to participate again.
Best wishes and good weekend,
Celia
Celia M. Santos Mazorra
Curator and Collections Manager
Fossil Invertebrates and Paleobotany Collections.
Department of Collections
Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales. National Agency CSIC.
c/ José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2
28006 Madrid (Spain)
Phone number: +34 914111328 Ext. 1241
e-mail: csantos[at]mncn.csic.es
https://www.mncn.csic.es/es/colecciones/cientificas/invertebrados-fosiles
https://www.mncn.csic.es/es/colecciones/cientificas/paleobotanica
De:
cetaf_earthsc@cetaf.simplelists.com [mailto:cetaf_earthsc@cetaf.simplelists.com]
En nombre de Kröger, Björn
Enviado el: viernes, 30 de abril de 2021 17:24
Para: cetaf_earthsc@cetaf.simplelists.com
Asunto: [CETAF_ESG] Digitization of historical specimens / samples & verbatim names
Hello everyone,
I just had a conversation with Jiri Frank about the current VA Synthesys call and GeoCASe and he recommended me to bring the issue to the ESG group:
Here in Helsinki the palaeo-collections consist in large part of historical material acquired from commercial fossil dealers during late 19th early 20th century
(The majority from Krantz Mineralienkontor). We now have almost all specimens databased and could publish them on GeoCASe. But the problem is the data. Most of the taxonomies are hopelessly outdated and locality information is a wild mix of verbatim and updated.
Additionally, such material is often regarded as scientifically problematic and difficult to use, because it is acquired second hand, with poor locality and stratigraphy information
and outdated taxonomy. So publishing it on GeoCaASe as it is, is a bit problematic, so to say.
I think we are not the only museum with this problem. Especially many smaller museums across Europe probably have large parts of their collections acquired second hand, especially from Krantz.
However, material acquired from Krantz etc., often contains specimens by respected scientists (sometimes even entire suites) and it comes from classical localities,
which are often inaccessible today. Krantz material, therefore, is a rich source for neotypes and largely unexplored for palaeobiological and palaeoecological analyses. This material also has the curatorial advantage that it comes from a limited number of
localities and and that lots of this material is redundant across collections. This offers a chance to avoid redundant curating work in updating the metadata, because there is potentially always
somewhere else one collection where the metadata of specimens from one locality, or one taxon are in a good shape.
This is the reason why I suggest a VA project with the aim just to digitize just the Krantz material from different museums, make it explicitly visible at GeoCASe, and
with it, provide a tool to harmonize the verbatim names (taxon, locality, etc.). In parallel I consider to submit an application (here in Finland) to support a zooniverse citizen science project and/or automated solution to find verbatim name matches across
collections, based on GeoCASe records.
Now I have a few questions:
Do you think this worth the effort? Is my impression right, that there would be many new use-cases if e.g., Krantz material is explicitely accessible at GeoCASe?
Would anyone of the ESG group specifically interested in a direct cooperation for such a VA project and an application elsewhere?
I am happy about feedback,
Best wishes,
Björn
----------------------
~ ~ ~ >0<>
Björn Kröger
Curator of the palaeontological collection, PhD,
Finnish Museum of Natural History
P.O.Box 44 (Jyrängöntie 2)
00014 University of Helsinki,
Finland
Tel ++358.504482214
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2427-2364
Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bjoern_Kroeger
Tuhat: https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/bj%C3%B6rn-kr%C3%B6ger
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