by Tara Wainwright

5 min read

Over the past couple of years, DiSSCo UK has created numerous resources outlining the project’s goals and benefits while advocating for a national digitisation programme. Initially creating a website to promote our work and communicate with the collections community, we have since partnered with GBIF (The Global Biodiversity Information Facility) to develop a national data portal for life science collections. The contents of the original website have now been transferred here to the data portal to create a single unified resource for DiSSCo UK.

The UK national data portal allows users to discover digitised specimens within the life sciences by aggregating UK collections data published to GBIF. It builds on GBIF’s existing infrastructure which is already widely used by the scientific community and holds data for millions of digitised UK specimens. The portal integrates GRSciColl (the Global Registry of Scientific Collections), a community curated registry for natural science collections across the globe. Our portal therefore acts as a one-stop resource for discovery of UK natural science collections, from institutional through to individual specimen level, improving access to UK collections and guiding data mobilisation efforts.

By combining features from the DiSSCo UK website with the data portal, we have created a clearer user journey and improved the process of finding information, be that digitised specimens, digitisation workflows, collections-holding institutions, or project updates. Our website is now more easily updated, enabling us to share news with the community more regularly and consistently.

DiSSCo UK is a driver for digitally transforming natural science collections, promoting open data and raising data standards. Through the renovated DiSSCo UK website, we will continue to improve the accessibility of UK natural science collections and advance the impact of digital collections to empower global communities and vital scientific research.