The Garden Hosts WeDigBio Community Science Day

By Annie Ayers

Thousands of people worldwide work together in an annual event to digitize biodiversity collections called WeDigBio. This event, which stands for Worldwide Engagement for Digitizing Biocollections, takes place annually from October 13 through 17

WeDigBio is a global data campaign, virtual science festival, and local outreach opportunity. All around the world scientists convert data from physical specimens into online databases in an effort to engage the public and transform collections into highly useable data platforms. The activity of other biodiversity collections are displayed in real-time on the WeDigBio website, visualized by a global map of activity, and shown in a tally of digitized records.

The event’s outcomes are fourfold:

Create digital biodiversity data
Increase public awareness of the value of natural history collections
Have fun with volunteers
Connect with a global community working in a big simultaneous effort

The Garden’s Clifton Smith Herbarium participated in this year’s event by hosting several volunteer sessions, over two days, in which barcodes were applied to the museum specimens alongside our team of Garden scientists.

In 2021, volunteers helped us barcode 3,000 specimens over an action-packed two days.

The Garden’s 2022 Event by the Numbers:

Number of volunteers:
• Thursday: 7
• Friday: 10
• Total:17
Number of barcodes:
• Thursday: 808
• Friday: 782
• Total: 1,590
Number of Images:
• Thursday: 336
• Friday: 468
• Total: 804