Historical Records and Digitization Factors in Biodiversity Communities of Practice

A central aim of biodiversity informatics initiatives is the global aggregation of biodiversity data. This work depends significantly on the translation of local data and metadata into wider global standards. While this is often considered to be primarily a technical task, there are also organizational factors to consider. In this paper, we use a Communities of Practice approach to argue that data and metadata in individual departments and institutions has often adapted over time to meet local organizational contexts, and that digitization workflows need to account for and capture the historical dimensions of collections, to support productive data migration. As part of this work, the central role of curators’ and managers’ practical and everyday knowledge of their collections is emphasized.