Swisscollnet: Schweizer Netzwerk Naturhistorische Sammlungen
Launch of individual projects in collections in Switzerland
SwissCollNet has granted 68 projects in 53 public institutions with natural history collections in 21 cantons in Switzerland. By September 2022, all 44 projects of the first call for project proposals were started. From the second call for project proposals, additional 24 projects were granted and the grantees all have started working on the projects in March 2023 at latest.
By February 2024, SCNAT has received 7 final reports of projects terminated during the year 2023 as well as 48 intermediate reports.
Out of the 7 projects terminated, 6 projects were of short period (10 months in average). Nevertheless, an impressive number of results could be generated. 15 scientific publications, 18’623 specimens and 1366 type specimens digitised, 150 new type specimens detected, 7755 pictures or scans taken, 3676 specimens reidentified and 32’779 specimens reconditioned. The investments in total for these projects were 260’000 CHF from SwissCollNet and 307’400 CHF matching funds.
Projects granted out of the first call for proposals are well advanced. The major challenge of recruitment of personnel could be overcome with cost-neutral extensions of the projects. In many collections, non-expected material was detected during the reorganisation and reconditioning of the specimens or specimens were saved from destruction. Furthermore, new species for Switzerland were recognized and new species for science could be described as well as new type specimens were identified so far in a number of projects in different taxonomic groups. Many young scientists could be hired and a lot of knowledge transfer is occurring between experienced taxonomists and young scientists and students. At the level of digitisation, many grantees are describing a great benefit of the projects to the handling of data and the standardisation of data registration within their institutions. Some institutions already are in possession of an online-database of their institutions to publish data and images of their collections. Enrichment and publication of collection information on their online-portals has led to many new interactions and collaborations with international scientists. Also, loan requests were reported to be increased and where 3D-scans have been published, the necessity to ship precious specimens could be decreased. Grantees regularly report participation at international conferences and preparation of manuscripts to share the knowledge gained within the SwissCollNet projects or even the participation in advanced SNSF-projects.
Collection survey
With the collection survey, SwissCollNet will provide an inventory list of natural history collections and related information of institutions participating in the SwissCollNet-initiative. Furthermore, the collection surveys represent a tool for the institutions to monitor their collections in regard to curational aspects such as information on the number of specimens, digitization status, quality of conservation etc. Third, the information provided by the institutions will be deposited in the Global Registry of Scientific Collections (GRSciColl) and in the Swiss Virtual Natural History Collection (SVNHC). Fourth, the information will be presented in a scientific publication. Institutions applying for a project supported by SwissCollNet had to submit the collection survey at least for the specimens, which are subject of the project. In total, 113 curators have handed in metadata of their collections.
Publication of metadata on GRSciColl as well as on the webpage of SwissCollNet requests standardisation of the information provided by the curators. This work is done by the staff of the Swiss node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) in collaboration with the curators. In 2023, the GBIF staff was intensively involved in the development of the IT-infrastructure for natural history collection data aggregation (SVNHC). Nonetheless, they managed to update GRSciColl with information about the 40 Swiss institutions with collections and participating in the SwissCollNet-initiative and the registration of one third of the collection units (355 in total) curated in these institutions.
Development of the data aggregator and long-term solution for the SVNHC
In order to facilitate the access to natural history collection, data held in Swiss public institutions, SwissCollNet has planned to build a data aggregator and an online portal, where natural history collections data will be integrated, interconnected and digitally available (SVNHC). Based on a preparatory study, the Steering Board of SwissCollNet has decided in 2022, to collaborate with InfoSpecies. A project concept, project organisation and project plan have been elaborated and an agreement of collaboration has been signed by the two partners in June 2023.
Prior to signing the collaboration agreement, technical assessments on the existing infrastructure of the Swiss node of GBIF were made early in 2023 and a first draft of an IT-architecture plan was elaborated in collaboration with InfoSpecies in order to integrate digital information of biological and paleontological collections and collection specimens into the IT-landscape of the Swiss node of GBIF and the data centers for biodiversity observation data. Thereafter, a call for tender for the recruitment of an external IT-company was formulated. The project was then started in May with the participation of the members of the different project groups and the selected IT-company, zebbra.
National strategy 2025-2035
A national Strategy for natural history collections has been drafted by members of the BoE, based on a questionnaire that was sent to collection-holding institutions. Contents of a national Strategy for natural history collections have also been discussed with the participants of the SwissCollNet Workshop 2023. The draft was further developed in 2023 and results of the working group discussions form the annual workshop have been integrated. In addition, the draft has been discussed at the Annual meeting 2023 of MusNatColl (Verband der naturwissenschaftlichen Museen und Sammlungen der Schweiz und Liechtenstein).
Communication
Information about SwissCollNet, its scientific community, its projects and activities are summarized on the SwissCollNet webpage. The webpage has been regularly updated in 2023. Especially, all projects running in collection institutions are presented one by one with a lay summary in French or in German. Furthermore, a section on collection data management, aggregation and publication has been added.
Several articles about discoveries and results of SwissCollNet-projects in collection institutions have been published regularly in national and local media over the year 2023. Furthermore, SwissCollNet is publishing one to several short stories, describing discoveries in natural history collections during the work on projects financed by SwissCollNet on the webpage (out of the box). The stories are also regularly taken up by local media. Results of a SwissCollNet project were presented in the Tagesschau Hauptausgabe of the SRF.
In January 2023, the annual workshop of SwissCollNet could be held for the first time as a physical meeting. Besides an overview of SwissCollNet activities, several grantees of SwissCollNet initiative have presented their project approaches as well as preliminary results. Also, a presentation was given about standardization of collection specimen data and the application of the data standard Darwin Core. In the afternoon, the participants were invited to discuss about and work on the National Strategy for Natural History Collections in Switzerland 2025-2035 in smaller working groups.
With more than 120 participants from 50 institutions and museums, the workshop was very well frequented and many lively discussions, scientific and methodological exchanges were conducted.