GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Area residents will have the opportunity to help make biological collections accessible online during a free event Oct. 24 at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

The event from 10 a.m. to noon at Powell Hall on the University of Florida campus is part of the Worldwide Engagement for Digitizing Biocollections project, known as WeDigBio. Participants will take part in a citizen science project to help convert some of the billions of records in analog form into digital format to advance scientific research.

Florida Museum associate curator and project coordinator Robert Guralnick said the event is an opportunity toinvolve the global community of citizen scientists with the major challenge of documenting the state’s regional biodiversity.

“Every specimen in a museum has been kept for a good reason and tells a story,” Guralnick said. “WeDigBio helps each of those stories to be unlocked from paper and brought to digital life.”

The Smithsonian Institution, Museum National d’ Histoire Naturelle, Paris, Australian Museum and Florida State University among others are organizing similar events during the four-day effort Oct. 22-25 to accelerate the rate of digital data creation for millions of specimens and species worldwide.

Participants at the Florida Museum event ages 12 and under must be accompanied by an adult. UF Herbarium specimens are now available for transcription at www.notesfromnature.org.

For more information about the WeDigBio event, visit www.wedigbio.org.

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Writer: Maria Espinoza, PRintern@flmnh.ufl.edu
Source: Robert Guralnick, robgur@gmail.com
Media contact: Paul Ramey, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu, 352-273-2054