The SCC is extremely excited to announce that starting in November, we are kicking off our latest webinar series: the Specify Institutional Implementation Series.
Specify software was designed with the intention to support each institution’s unique needs and workflows. Due to that flexibility, institutions have a myriad of options for how to implement Specify for their collections, depending on how much data the collections want to share, how much access they want to provide to staff from other collections, how they want to support their collections, and how their staff will work with their data and each other.
The implementation choices can seem overwhelming, especially for institutions with multiple collections being brought into Specify. Knowing who to talk to, what questions to ask, and understanding the implications of all decisions will give decision makers a solid foundation to move forward with confidence.
The series will start with a presentation by SCC’s Grant Fitzsimmons on the different implementation options available, implications of the different options on data sharing and management, and questions to ask before choosing a path.
This series will continue with current Specify members who have already implemented Specify in their institution. It will explain the setup option that was chosen for their institution and delve into the factors that played into that decision. It will review the questions they asked, the questions they should have asked, the aspects of implementation that proved more difficult than anticipated, the aspects that were easier, the benefits gained from their approach, and the lessons they learned.
Webinars in Series:
Database Planning, Structure & Sharing in Specify
Grant Fitzsimmons, Technical Support Manager, Specify Collections Consortium
University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute Digital Infrastructure and Specify Setup
Andrew Bentley, Ichthyology Collections Manager, University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute
Specify Implementation and Planning at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Dr. Elspeth Haston, Deputy Herbarium Curator; Rob Cubey, Plant Records Officer; and Robyn Drinkwater, Digitisation Informatics Coordinator, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Supporting Transitions to Specify 7: Insights from our Implementation Journey at the Canadian Forest Service
Presented by Kathryn Jastremski (Manager and Science Advisor), supported by Héryk Julien (Data Management Specialist), and Amélie Potvin (Biologist)
Implementing Specify for the Australian National Research Collections
Presented by Dr. Dan Baker, NRCA CMS Data Manager, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
Supporting a Large Userbase in Specify
Presented by Dr. Dan Baker, NRCA CMS Data Manager and Zoe Warner, NRCA CMS Data Manager, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
Upcoming Webinar
Towards a Single Natural History Museum & Nationwide Mass Digitization
Presented by Fedor Alexander Steeman, The Natural History Museum, Denmark (NHMD) in Copenhagen
The Natural History Museum, Denmark (NHMD) in Copenhagen was formally established in 2004 through the organizational merger of four historically significant institutions: the Zoological Museum, the Geological Museum, the Botanical Museum, and the Botanical Garden affiliated with the University of Copenhagen. A decade later, the NHMD joined forces with other natural history institutions in a national consortium to adopt Specify as their collections management system and started the process of data migration. This process is still ongoing for the NHMD in Copenhagen as more and more collections are added to the fold. In 2021, the broader Danish project called DaSSCo, a node of the European DiSSCo network, was launched and started the process of mass digitization of the largest collections still not yet digitally registered. Over the course of the years, these different constellations led to various decisions on the implementation and roll out of our Specify installations.
March 24th at 6 am CDT/12:00 CET/13:00 SAST/22:00 AEDT
Link: Towards a Single Natural History Museum & Nationwide Mass Digitization