Historical Considerations in Biodiversity Informatics

Historical collections of biological specimens are potentially rich sources of data for contemporary researchers. However, many technical issues have to be addressed in order to make these collections widely available. This paper reports on a qualitative study of historical and current data practices at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, which is seeking wider understanding of the historical dimensions of specimen metadata, in order to support migration to more global standards. A detailed case study of a single specimen shows how that specimen has been described in multiple ways and in multiple locations within the Academy, and the historically complex nature of the data and metadata contained in these descriptions.ye