Written by Dr Steven Allain, UK Conservation Officer and Trustee for the British Herpetological Society (BHS)
The treasure trove of biodiversity information hidden within published works is immense—but much of it remains inaccessible to researchers, conservationists, and policymakers. To unlock this wealth of data, the British Herpetological Society is currently working on an ambitious project: digitising species distribution records from our historic and contemporary publications. Published works such as these journals often contain irreplaceable details about species past distributions, habitats, and ecological interactions between species. However, this information is typically stored as printed text or images, or not available to begin with. Our ambition is to make this data available to all, assisting in species conservation on a global scale. The British Herpetological Society has been publishing scientific articles since 1948, covering species and ecosystems worldwide.
We are calling on citizen scientists and data enthusiasts to assist in this vital initiative. If you have previous experience with entering data in the Darwin Core format, it is preferred but not essential. You will join a team of fellow volunteers to help transcribe species records from scanned documents to then be shared with researchers globally, via the NBN Atlas and GBIF. It is not just the amphibians and reptiles that we are focussing on, all of the species mentioned in each of the articles is important to us and our goal of making all of this vital data available. After all, how can we protect a species if we don’t fully understand where it can be found?
Your efforts in assisting with this project will help to conserve and enhance biodiversity knowledge for future generations, both at home and abroad. Whether you’re an avid nature lover, a data nerd or a keen enthusiast, we need your help. You can dedicate as much or as little time to the project around your availability, which will be reflected in your workload. Training will be given where appropriate and a digitisation protocol has been developed with the help of the NBN Trust. You may even learn some taxonomy or find a new favourite species in the process of data entry.
If you would like to find out more or to volunteer your time to this project, then please contact Steve Allain (steveallain@live.co.uk). Let’s digitise the past to safeguard the future together!