UCB Workshop Invitation

UC Berkeley Community Design Workshop Invitation

You are cordially invited to meet with us to discuss specimen management systems for herbaria, botanical gardens, and other natural history collections.

The initiative

With the support of a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the University of California, Berkeley and its partners at the Museum of the Moving Image and the Walker Art Center are changing the way museums and other collecting organizations work together on software development, use, and governance. By bringing together institutions grappling with similar issues, we hope to develop a model for sharing knowledge, resources, and experiences in order to create solutions to our common problems.

The UC Berkeley workshop will demonstrate work done to migrate the specimen collection of the University and Jepson Herbaria into CollectionSpace, including the development of workflows for image-based cataloging of specimen sheets.  Community input on new work related to living and preserved collections, rapid data capture, data sharing, mapping, and georeferencing will be sought in order to provide the kinds of services needed in natural history collections.  Finally, the meeting will develop this idea of a community-supported version of CollectionSpace that can be sustained as both the field and technology move forward.

The meeting

The workshop will take place on February 17, 2012, at UC Berkeley and will be jointly hosted by Information Services and Technology and the University and Jepson Herbaria. We have invited you because your prior excellent work, thought, and experience guarantee that you’ll have much to contribute to a focused and lively discussion.

Invited participants include representatives from several herbaria, botanical gardens, and other natural history collections.  Representatives from the CollectionSpace project will also be on hand.  We will be contacting you in advance of the meeting to share more details, and a draft agenda for the workshop will be available on the CollectionSpace project wiki.

Travel details

For out-of-town guests, UC Berkeley will provide lodging for two nights (February 16 and 17) and reimbursement for transportation costs (up to $500).

Next steps

If you are interested in attending, or have further questions about the meeting and related project, please contact Chris Hoffman at chris.hoffman@berkeley.edu or 510-642-9643. We urge you to respond to us by January 6, 2012. Feel free to recommend an alternative staff member who may be more directly involved if you feel such a suggested replacement is applicable (subject to UCB approval).

Sincerely,

Andrew Doran

....

Chris Hoffman

Manager of Informatics Services

Information Services and Technology, Research and Content Technologies