Gladys A. Cotter, The Digitization of Museum Specimens, The Scientist 18(6), 8 (Mar. 29, 2004). Excerpt: "Natural history museum collections contain a world of knowledge that can be used to support the needs of science and society. We need to develop the infrastructure, technology, and collaborative framework to make these collections electronically available to a worldwide audience. " Cotter goes on to draw comparisons to the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII), a data resource established by the National Academy of Sciences and maintained by the US Geological Survey. "A September 2003 workshop sponsored by NBII and The Natural Science Collections Alliance (NSCA) began the development of an integrated research tool for networking collections." Cotter goes on to report that some "three million specimen records" can be accessed through NBII and its partners. A collaboration is occuring between the NBII and local and regional natural science networks, particularly to develop data standards to ease access to these research collections. The author suggests that this kind of partnership could have broad application within the museum community.
Posted by
Garrett at 3/30/2004 11:14:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
