Professors who are preparing their course content for the new semester may want to include a day for their students to participate in WeDigBio. The 2016 event will be held on October 20-23.
Austin Mast, a professor at Florida State University and an organizer of WeDigBio, offers this suggestion of how to incorporate the worldwide digitization event into a course: “Last year I reserved a computer lab for my Field Botany class during WeDigBio, and the students transcribed specimen labels at one of the participating citizen science platforms (Notes from Nature) while working through the exercises at https://www.wedigbio.org/content/educational-exercises. It was very popular.”
WeDigBio encourages citizen scientists and the public to assist in the digitization of natural history collections. Organizations can post images of specimens with their labels on partner transcription platforms for transcription or host an on-site transcription event.
Professors who participate in WeDigBio should complete the form at https://www.wedigbio.org/content/wedigbio-2016-event-hosts.