NSF Org:	DBI Division of Biological Infrastructure
Recipient:	LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY FOUNDATION
Initial Amendment Date:	August 27, 2020
Latest Amendment Date:	September 13, 2022
Award Number:	2001601
Award Instrument:	Continuing Grant
Program Manager:	Reed Beaman rsbeaman@nsf.gov  (703)292-7163 DBI  Division of Biological Infrastructure BIO  Directorate for Biological Sciences
Start Date:	November 1, 2020
End Date:	October 31, 2025 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount:	$1,776,007.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date:	$1,776,007.00
Funds Obligated to Date:	FY 2020 = $862,130.00 FY 2021 = $446,415.00 FY 2022 = $467,462.00
History of Investigator:	Regina Wetzer (Principal Investigator) rwetzer@nhm.org Trina Roberts (Co-Principal Investigator) Elizabeth Ellwood (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office:	Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Foundation 900 EXPOSITION BLVD LOS ANGELES CA  US  90007-4057 (213)744-3301
Sponsor Congressional District:	37
Primary Place of Performance:	Los Angeles County Natural History Museum 900 Exposition Blvd. Los Angeles CA  US  90007-4057
Primary Place of Performance Congressional District:	37
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI):	UKB4JJ1M1647
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s):	Infrastructure Capacity for Bi, Digitization
Primary Program Source:	01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002223DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s):	6895
Program Element Code(s):	085Y00, 689500
Award Agency Code:	4900
Fund Agency Code:	4900
Assistance Listing Number(s):	47.074

ABSTRACT

For two centuries, America has amassed an unparalleled collection of specimens from exploring the world's oceans. They were pulled up with nets, scooped up from seabeds with grabs, and hand-collected by divers, all contributing to a library of biodiversity that captures the state of life in the ocean - year after year, decade after decade. The broadest evolutionary scope of those collections is in the marine invertebrates, animals without backbones - sea stars, corals, worms, jellyfish, crabs, and thousands of other animals. That library of preserved marine invertebrates is our essential guide to the diversity of ocean life across the globe. And because they encapsulate data from the moment they were picked up, these institutional collections also act as a time machine, letting us use the past to understand how our present will become the future. But there is a problem - vast numbers of these specimens are essentially invisible outside of a tiny community of museum specialists. The only record of these specimens' existence is on labels enclosed in the jars with the preserved animals or in paper logbooks on a shelf. These specimens will remain nearly undiscoverable on museum shelves until their core descriptive information is made digitally available. Therefore, this project will create public digital records for over 7.5 million specimens from our nation's legacy of marine exploration, thereby making the immense investment in the specimens' acquisition available to 21st Century biodiversity and ecosystems research. Because these specimens provide a visible and tangible window into our oceans' enchanting biodiversity, this project will involve STEM educators and student educators in the digitization effort, so that they will be able to reflect their science experiences directly back to the classroom. The public will be involved virtually, by contributing transcription of specimen label data.

Digitization of alcohol-preserved marine specimens has never been carried out on this scale. A major challenge lies in the location of the data: written, typed, or printed on labels in the jars with the specimens. In many cases, that will require opening the jar, extracting the label, and either transcribing it directly or photographing it for later transcription - for hundreds of thousands of jars. The immediate participants in this program will digitize most or all of the marine invertebrate collections at nineteen institutions across the country, more than doubling the number of digital records for marine invertebrates in the U.S. All data will be publicly available through existing data portals, including iDigBio.org, using standardized data formats, thereby dramatically enhancing the accessibility of biodiversity data for comprehensive, systems-based analysis of ocean ecosystems.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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