Community

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Workshops

Using Wikidata to capture and share information about paleontological collecting sites

4-5 October 2022, virtual

This workshop built on experience gained by participants in Part I of the series (Using Wikidata to capture and share information about people in paleontology) to explore the possibility of using Wikidata to curate community knowledge about paleontological collecting sites. Participants began by defining the information needs regarding paleontological collecting sites, including flagging aspects of the data that may be problematic to share publicly. We then assessed how these information needs could, or could not, fit into a Wikidata model. We used a predetermined set of representative paleo collecting sites as test data for this workshop.

Using wikidata to capture and share information about paleontological collecting sites

Website with materials related to a workshop exploring the possibility of using Wikidata to curate community knowledge about paleontological collecting sites. Participants began by defining the information needs regarding paleontological collecting sites, including flagging aspects of the data that may be problematic to share publicly. They then assessed how these information needs could, or could not, fit into a Wikidata model.

Using Wikidata to capture and share information about people in paleontology

29-31 March 2022, virtual

This workshop served as a hands-on introduction to finding, editing, and using data in Wikidata, using people associated with paleontology collections (e.g., collectors, researchers, collections staff) as subjects for this introduction. Wikidata offers a solution for capturing and sharing information about people that allows the paleontology community to capitalize on the distributed knowledge curated by individual collections. This workshop explored how anyone working in paleo can add information to Wikidata efficiently, as well as how to create links between Wikidata and a collections management system (CMS). Workshop participants co-created guidelines for disambiguating people and curating Wikidata entries in the paleo context, including what types of information are ideal to capture (e.g., birth and death dates, research areas, collecting focus, links to publications, links to archival materials, etc.).

Using wikidata to capture and share information about people in paleontology

Website with materials related to a workshop that served as a hands-on introduction to finding, editing, and using data in Wikidata, using people associated with paleontology collections (e.g., collectors, researchers, collections staff) as subjects for this introduction.

Guidelines for Using Wikidata to Mobilize Information about People in Collections: A Paleontology Perspective

The purpose of this document is to provide a framework for how to mobilize information via Wikidata about people working in and/or associated with scientific collections. Building on previous Wikidata documentation produced by Siobhan Leachman (2020, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4724139) participants of the Using Wikidata to Capture and Share Information about People in Paleontology workshop (held March 29-31, 2022) created this framework to formalize and share practical knowledge gained from the workshop.

Georeferencing for Paleo: Refreshing the approach to fossil localities

27-29 April 2020, virtual

As the United States paleo collections community wraps up funding on several Thematic Collections Networks we recognize that a significant amount of digitization work remains to be done and that georeferencing is one of the next big roadblocks, both within the US and for our colleagues around the world. Across all collection types, there are major issues with the quality of georeference data currently available on biodiversity data aggregators such as iDigBio and GBIF. For paleo collections, there are additional issues related to applying existing georeferencing workflows in the paleontological context, as well as to sharing georeference data publicly. This workshop will take advantage of the momentum catalyzed by funding in the US paleontological collections community to address critical issues related to georeferencing workflows and georeferencing data quality.

Georeferencing for Paleo: Refreshing the approach to fossil localities

Website with materials related to a workshop about current practices and challenges georeferencing collecting localities for fossil specimens.

Conferences

External resources