Digitization: Transcription for records and high-resolution images.
We are on target to meet our digitization (i.e., transcribing, georeferencing, and imaging) goals despite having to address unexpected challenges in refining protocols, implementing workflows, and for several museums organizing physical collections in preparation for digitization.
We have produced 457,788 records (120% of expected to date), with 88% of records identified at the species or subspecies level, and 52% of the records georeferenced. An additional 32 collaborators (non-ADBC funded museums that use our data portal to serve their data) have provided an additional 252,010 records. There are 16 collections (referred to as added-value) have allowed us to harvest their data via IPT to serve 479,443 more lepidopteran records. In total, we are serving 1,342,711 records, representing >64,000 species and 93% of the records are from North America.
What is most encouraging about the lepidopteran records is that 88% of the records are identified to species, which is higher than any of the other major orders. Thus, the primary factor limiting the production of “research-ready” data is due to georeferencing. For Lepidoptera 54% of the records are research-ready (i.e., identified to species and georeferenced) and by georeferencing existing records we should increase that percentage to 90% over the next three years. We realize that many records represent misidentified specimens and we also need to seek additional non-ADBC funding to review as many specimen identifications as possible.
Nineteen of the LepNet museums have started producing high-resolution images. LepNet collections have posted 47,214 images, which is 241% of expected. We serve an additional 222,551 lepidopteran images on the LepNet portal from other providers.