About PDWG
Draft: The content on this page has not been finalized. Contributors can mark a page as complete and remove this warning by adding status: published to the front matter in the Markdown source file.
Last modifed date missing: No modified date was found for this page. Please add last_modified_at: yyyy-mm-dd to the front matter in the Markdown source file.
This website is brought to you by the Paleo Data Working Group (PDWG, pronounced “pidwig”), which is a community of practice centered around collections-based paleo and informatics professionals. PDWG was launched in May 2020 as a driving force for broader conversations about paleontological data standards and integration of fossil data into larger data ecosystems. We formed as a result of a decade of increasing collaboration between paleontology professionals digitizing their collections, including as part of an earlier Paleo Digitization Working Group hosted by iDigBio. Current activities include regular “happy hour” meetings, workshops, community outreach, and engagement with parallel groups and processes. We also maintain a community pipeline for carrying conversation through to documentation and guidelines, such as the content curated in this knowledge hub. Contact the PDWG Organizing Team at paleodatawg@gmail.com.
Get involved
Any and all paleontology collections (or allied) professionals are encouraged to participate in PDWG! We follow these community norms, including acting and interacting in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, and diverse community.
Quick start! Show up to a happy hour meeting, join our Slack workspace, and/or request to join our Google Group .
As a community of practice, we regularly use the following tools:
-
GitHub: PDWG has an organization on GitHub which hosts multiple repositories, including the one for this site. In addition to hosting content, we use GitHub for project management of our happy hour meetings. Any member of PDWG is welcome to request an invite to be a member of the GitHub organization.
-
Google Groups: We use Google Groups as a listserv where we post announcements about upcoming happy hours, workshops, or other events of interest. Request to join the Google Group here. Anyone is welcome to post to the Group. We have received feedback that not everyone can use Google Groups with their work emails, which can be annoying; until/unless we move to a different mailing list platform, the solution is to subscribe with a separate and/or additional email.
-
Google Drive: Our shared folder on Google Drive is a neutral, non-institutional space where community members can curate and manage access to collaborative working documents and resources that do not fit well (or yet) on this knowledge hub. Happy hour meeting materials live within this Google folder. Please request access if you think you should be enabled to edit files in this folder!
-
Slack: Our primary tool for asynchronous conversation between individual community members and interest groups within the PDWG community. To join the Slack workspace click here. If you are unfamiliar with Slack, see this 3-minute video overview of how to use it up for the Paleo Data workspace. Ours is a free Slack workspace, which means messages are only accessible for a 90-day history.
-
Zoom: We host happy hour and other synchronous meetings on Zoom, and occasionally use Zoom’s built-in collaboration tools like Whiteboard. Look for a link to the happy hour Zoom room in announcements posted to the Google Group and Slack.
We also frequently use EasyRetro as a feedback tool for community activities, either synchronous or asynchronous, and Zenodo is an essential tool for contributing individual/institutional expertise to this knowledge hub–learn more about that in our contributor guidelines.
List of institutions and people involved
Since 2020, PDWG has engaged close to 200 individuals from over 50 institutions. Participants vary in their engagement levels and come from a wide range of institutions, including independent museums, university collections, and representatives from US federal agencies. Current members of this group are largely based in the United States, but international members are very welcome. Active PDWG members who wish to be acknowledged are listed in the table below. If you should be added to this list, or your affiliation should be updated, please let us know by emailing paleodatawg@gmail.com!
| Affiliation | PDWG Member(s) |
|---|---|
| Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (ANSP) | Alejandra Martinez-Melo |
| Indiana University, Bloomington (IUB) | Jess Miller-Camp |
| Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (MCZ) | Christina Byrd |
| Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLA/LACM) | Juliet Hook |
| independent | Ben Norton, Erica Krimmel |
| Paleontological Research Institute (PRI) | Vicky Wang |
| University of Colorado Museum of Natural History (CUMNH) | Talia Karim, Jacob Van Veldhuizen |
| University of Kansas Natural History Museum & Biodiversity Institute | Natalia López Carranza (KUMIP), Lindsay Walker (Symbiota) |
| University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN | Thomas Hickson |
| Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (SNOMNH) | Margaret Landis, Roger Burkhalter |
| Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History (SCMNH) | Wayne Thompson |
| Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) | Holly Little, Amanda Millhouse, Jessie Nakano, Matt Miller, Alex Lawrence |
| Stanford University (LSJU) | Chrissy Garcia |
| University of Wisconsin Geology Museum (UWGM) | Carrie Eaton |
| Yale Peabody Museum (YPM) | Jessica Utrup |
What is the logo??
The PDWG logo, the trilocorn (i.e. a trilobite + a unicorn), is our working group mascot. The trilocorn lives and thrives in our souls, encouraging us to be the best data and collections managers we can be. Consider the trilocorn as the patronus of paleo collections, protecting against the slippery slope of data chaos.