Many scientific and scholarly disciplines depend on the use of collections: collections of specimens housed in natural history museums, core repositories, or tree ring labs; or collections of data stored on servers or spreadsheets. Yet, these valuable and irreplaceable infrastructures often fade from public view — and consequently, from budget lines and funding priorities. Clearly demonstrating the value of collections can help ensure that they (and their stewards) receive the funding and administrative support they need.
In this talk Andrea will present work on two projects aimed at making the impact of scientific collections and their related data resources more visible. In the first, we calculated the “replacement cost” of the Neotoma paleoecology database to demonstrate the value of a long-lived, community-curated data resource. In the second, we developed specimen data citation guidelines to help make the use of physical collections more clear, traceable and reproducible in the scientific literature — and therefore eventually make it easier for collections staff to show the impact of their work overtime.