| NSF Org: |
DBI Division of Biological Infrastructure |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | April 30, 2013 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | April 30, 2013 |
| Award Number: | 1304585 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Reed Beaman
rsbeaman@nsf.gov (703)292-7163 DBI Division of Biological Infrastructure BIO Directorate for Biological Sciences |
| Start Date: | July 1, 2013 |
| End Date: | June 30, 2017 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $199,753.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $199,753.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
2385 IRVING HILL RD LAWRENCE KS US 66045-7563 (785)864-3441 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
2385 Irving Hill Rd Lawrence KS US 66045-7568 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Digitization |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.074 |
ABSTRACT
An award is made to establish a thematic collection network that will digitize and make accessible media recordings associated with physical voucher specimens, broadly organized around the research theme of understanding the evolution and ecology of communication signals. Research on these questions has been challenged by the relative inaccessibility of the signal recordings and their associated physical specimens. This project will meet this challenge by partnering together multiple biological research collections and the Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds, the world's largest scientific archive of animal signal recordings. Collectively, these institutions will co-curate and make accessible digitized and vouchered recordings of the communication signals of birds, frogs, fish and insects, and will establish direct and transparent links across collections between physical voucher specimens and their digitized recordings. This project will make accessible digital audio recordings of animal signals that can be used to address a host of scientific questions, including the responses of animals to anthropogenic noise and other human activities. By providing a useful co-curation system and encouraging collection of recordings along with physical specimens, this project will have a transformative influence on the way that researchers collect and use biological specimens in the future, and will serve as a useful model for collections facing similar co-curation challenges.
This project will also provide materials for extensive educational outreach at all age levels, and will have significant conservation impacts because the digitized material will contribute directly to our ability to assess and monitor biodiversity. Finally, this project will expand biological collection methods and help train the "next generation" of museum curators, collectors, and researchers. This award is made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program and all data resulting from this award will be available through the national resource (iDigBio.org).
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The goal of this large, collaborative project has been to establish a new thematic collection network (TCN) to comprehensively digitize and co-curate recorded animal signals (media specimens) and corresponding vouchers (physical specimens) at major U.S. museums and research collections. This has been achieved with a multi-institutional effort to capture and archive many important but rapidly deteriorating tape and film collections of animal communication signals, and to serve all freely with the scientific community and public via The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds, the world’s largest scientific archive of animal signal recordings.
Organized broadly around the research theme “understanding animal signal evolution” this project also established direct database linkages between online research collection portals serving data from preserved scientific (physical) voucher specimens and their co-curated (recordings, images, video) media specimens. Furthermore, in collaboration with the national digitization repository (iDigBio), this TCN, established database connections, functional protocols, and other tools to prevent the challenge of analog media backlog from arising in the future. Four major outcomes will greatly facilitate the future growth of our newly-established TCN: (1) first, we fully digitized vouchered analog media recordings of communication signals of frogs, toads, birds, fishes and insects and archived all Cornell’s Macaulay Library (with digital copies returned to institutions housing physical specimens). (2) We established direct and transparent database links across collections by exchange of unique identifiers (catalog numbers) between the digitized media specimens at the Macaulay Library and physical voucher specimens in biodiversity repositories. (3) We enhanced accessibility of all specimens by making specimen information available through iDigBio, VertNet, and other data aggregators. (4) Finally, we established new workflows and protocols to IT-enable future field research and specimen/media collecting expeditions, and established new digitization and archiving norms for capturing all specimen-associated, ancillary data typically collected by field biologists (live animal images, habitat photos, georeferenced field transects, scans of original field notes, etc.). By making digitization a standard part of specimen curation practices at numerous major research facilities on U.S. university and college campuses, we enhanced accessibility of digitized animal communication media resources, as our TCN helped train a new generation of museum curators, collectors, and researchers.
Last Modified: 11/11/2017
Modified by: Rafe Brown
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