WG2-WG5 Joint Workshop Digitization in Italy September 12-13, Padua, Italy

MOBILISE WG5 and WG2 are organizing a joint meeting in Italy, in the city of Padova, on September 12th-13th. The two days meeting is planned for facilitating the transfer of technology and knowledge between the MOBILISE/DiSSCo community and the institutes starting a major digitization effort in Italy in 2023-2025, funded by the Italian Government in the framework of the National Resilience and Resistence Plan (PNRR). The final aim of this workshop is to increase the efficiency of digitisation and data mobilisation in a national project across small, medium, and large collections.

Italy is an interesting test bed for digitization efforts, since it has ca. 450 different institutions which host natural history collections. These differ in size (from a few large Natural History Museums, each hosting 10 million specimens or more, to very small ones, with a few thousand specimens), administration (University, Regional, Municipal, Ecclesiastic, or other private institutions), amount of personnel, accessibility, etc. Thus, several different approaches for the digitization of the Italian Natural History Cultural Heritage are necessary.

This workshop will bring together the Italian coordinators with other specialists on Digitisation of Collections and Biodiversity Data form across Europe, in a total of 45 participants. The main outputs of the workshop will be:

• an effective exchange of technology and knowledge between the MOBILISE/DiSSCo community and the Italian institutes;
• an analysis of the complex and fragmented Italian situation, addressing the issues which could be more impactful on the digitization of Natural History Collections;
• the establishment of a strengthened cooperation between Italian Natural History Museums, the DiSSCo community, and the GBIF in order to properly publish biodiversity data in open and FAIR format.