The document outlines the institutional benefits of Dissco, focusing on the digitization and accessibility of natural history collections to enhance research and public engagement. It highlights the challenges and innovations in data management, including crowdsourcing transcriptions and partnerships with citizen science projects. Additionally, it discusses objectives for improving coordination and funding within the natural history community to better support digital and molecular transitions.

1. Institutional benefits of DiSSCo:
Building on our experience
DiSSCo Connect, Scheltema, Leiden, NL
15th May 2017
Vince Smith, Head of Informatics, NHM London
@vsmithuk and @NHM_Digitise

2. Natural History collections are our best record of
human impact on the natural world

3. Collections with purpose

4. Collections that change how we think

5. Collections to inspire the next generation

6. Collections at scale

7. Institutional
Challenges

8. Digitisation
Digitisation

9. Big data
300M pages 100’s of PB 3D data
Trillions of interactions>700M occurrences

10. Innovation

11. Innovation
1. Label
identification &
perspective warp
2. Label crop
3. Label merge
4. Finished for
OCR or
crowdsourcing

12. Data management & access

13. Public engagement
A partnership
with Notes
from Nature
Part of a wider community of
over 1 million users interested in
citizen science projects
Data on transcriptions
Data on transcribersCrowdsourcing
transcriptions

14. www.synthesys.info synthesys@nhm.ac.uk
Creating an integrated European
infrastructure for researchers in the
natural sciences
SYNTHESYS – FP6 – 2004-2009
13M€, 20 Partners (66 months)
SYNTHESYS2 – FP7 – 2009-2013
7.2M€, 20 Partners (48 months)
SYNTHESYS3 – FP7 – 2013-2017
8M€, 21 Partners (48 months)
>4.5k pubs, 4k projects, >50k research days
Transitioning NH institutions to molecular & digital

15. Transnational
Access improves
accessibility of natural
history collections
through funded physical
access to
collections/expertise and
facilities.
Joint Research
Activities improve
access to data stored
digitally within NH
collections by extracting
and enhancing data from
digitised collections.
Network Activities
deliver collection
management policies, best
practice models, unified
standards and protocols for
new and emerging
collections.
Objectives
Draft INFRAIA-01– 2018/19–H2020: Call for NH community, aligned to DiSSCo

16. 1. Better return on investment, minimising overlapping tasks between
institutions and countries and creating a common knowledge base;
2. Ability to influence the agenda of DiSSCo at central level (participating
in the decision making processes);
3. Improve coordination of cross institutional funding applications, with
better alignment to institutional priorities;
4. Strengthen their case at national level on the value of collections, and
thus be in a better position to attract more funding.
Added value for institutional partners
Key benefits