Importing records from biodiversity and natural history collections via aggregators (iDigbio)

Thanks to an international effort by biodiversity and natural history museums to standardize their collection metadata and make it harvestable by aggregating databases, we are often able to import new specimen records instead of requiring manual record creation.

Import from iDigBio - Use the Search Portal during the upload protocol to find the specimen's iDigBio record. iDigBio records will only show up if the information entered into the fields exactly match the information on the iDigBio record. Partial information does not return results. For example, when searching for the specimen “AMNH:Mammals:M-200603 ”, entering “200603” into the Catalog Number field would not yield the iDigBio record. The record would only show up if “M-200603” was entered into the Catalog Number Field. For this step, less information is more. If you are certain an iDigBio record exists for the specimen, type in the unquestionable identifying information. For example, the specimen “AMNH:Mammals:M-200603” is a Callithrix jacchus. The specimen undoubtedly belongs to the AMNH and it’s genus and species are Callithrix jacchus. Inputting just the Institution Code, Genus, and Species would return all the Callithrix jacchus specimen records from the AMNH. Using the “Crtl+F” shortcut, you can then search for the catalog number in the search results. If the specimen record already exists in MorphoSource, you would select “Use”. If the iDigBio record has not been imported into MorphoSource, you would select “Import”. All the information from the iDigBio record would be used to create the MorphoSource specimen record.

Search of the portal and selection of records is demonstrated in this tutorial (also linked on the root page):