Connecting Collections workshop series

Natural science collections throughout the world are repositories for and stewards of primary bio- and geodiversity records. Their mission is to maintain and preserve over the long-term physical specimens, tissue samples and additional specialized collections, as well as their digitized representations in local databases and global aggregators.They are sharing the wealth of information in their collections freely with scientists worldwide, can contribute invaluable baseline data, scientific expertise and knowledge to biodiversity monitoring and further biodiversity conservation applications, are engaged in education and outreach to the public as well as in science-policy advocacy.Collections’ wealths, stored in access-restricted rooms and facilities, often remain hidden from the public, scientists and policy-makers, if not digitized and made available online. Similarly, especially smaller institutions and their collections might not be well known beyond their local and national contexts.As collections community and biodiversity scientists, we would like to change this. Based on an initiative of the Biodiversity Crisis Response Committee of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (https://spnhc.org/) in collaboration with national environmental ministries, collection institutions and biodiversity scientists, and supported by the Capacity Enhancement Support Program (CESP2022-011) of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (https://www.gbif.org/) we are taking action.Accessibility to collections information forms a key element for providing visibility to natural science collections. Over the coming year, we are improving the number of records and the quality of their information for collections in Latin America and the Caribbean that are openly accessible in GBIF’s Registry for Scientific Collections (GRSciColl, https://www.gbif.org/grscicoll). With GRSciColl forming an infrastructure backbone, our current endeavor is an important step on the way towards an engaged, densely connected, equitable and diverse collections network of global scope.