Through our relationship with the California Academy of Sciences, we have been awarded a $60,000 grant from NSF to host two small strategic workshops on our E-Type Initiative at the Smithsonian in the coming months. The vast majority of these funds cover travel and workshop costs. Planning efforts are underway.

The E-Type Workshops intend to bring together a global consortium of leading scientific and natural science organizations. This consortium will co-develop and launch a global initiative to ensure cooperation and collaboration among key scientific institutions organizations and biological collection managers to digitally image their primary type specimens. The first workshop will craft a recommended strategy for digitizing primary type specimens including developing cooperative relationships, technology vendors, recommended use of volunteers and interns, baseline understanding relative to the digitization challenges, criteria for prioritizing collections, and digitization process methodologies.

Many thanks go to Brian Fisher at the California Academy of Sciences (for including our request as part of his supplemental supporting grant) and to Scott Miller at the Smithsonian for his guidance and support of this initiative to digitally image primary type specimens.