The UTC Graduate School is pleased to announce that Chloe Smotherman will present Master's research titled, Increasing Accessibility to Natural History Research Collections with Digitization and Online Database Publication on 03/04/2025 at 11am in Lupton 376. Everyone is invited to attend. 

Environmental Science

Chair: Dr. Tim Gaudin

Co-Chair: Dr. David Aborn

Abstract:

The biological collections owned and maintained by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga have grown to include at least 200,000 specimens. Aside from the herbarium and insect collection, these collections are only available on local computers and have not been digitized and/or uploaded to any national or global databases. By uploading even one collections’ worth of data online, UTC can increase accessibility to the data, which ultimately enhances the value of the collection. The benefits of uploading collections are best exemplified in three integral ways: contributing to big data projects, recording usage of data in scientific research, and enhancing quality of the data. By moving our records off the shelves and onto the internet we are automatically contributing our collection data to a larger data set. Before a single researcher contacts the department for a loan, we are already contributing to large scale data pools by the act of publication alone. This advantage will continue to demonstrate its value through time despite any deterioration of the physical condition of the collection. By publishing our records online, we are not only increasing the likelihood that researchers will discover and use the data, but we are also able to track this usage and present it with evidentiary value when seeking funding. The value of our collections will also be enhanced by the return on data quality, both prior to and post-publication. Initially, data cleaning is required to best format the catalogue for publication. Post-publication, the data will be viewed and assessed by an increased number of professionals who are likely to catch errors. For this project, my goal was to digitize and upload two of UTC’s vertebrate collections, the mammals and the birds. I utilized Symbiota as the primary venue and uploaded our collection data within the Consortium of Vertebrate Collections (CVColl) portal in Symbiota.