Integrated Digitized Biocollections
Making data and images of millions of biological specimens available on the web.
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> 143M
Specimens of animals, plants, fungi, other...
> 57M
Associated image, audio, and video files
> 1.8K
Data from biodiversity collections in the US
Biological Collections
are Invaluable.
Estimates suggest that Natural History museums curate between 1 and 2 billion specimens in the U.S. and 3 to 4 billion worldwide. Prior to the advent of digitization and data portals, these collections were siloed, located great distances apart geographically, and difficult to visit. Digitization has resolved lots of these challenges.
The data within these collections, accumulated across space and time, are becoming essential in analyses by ecologists, environmental biologists, in conservation, human health investigations, food security, climate change, the bioeconomy, and many more fields.
Tell Us Why Collections Matter to You
iDigBio Sustainability
iDigBio has been proud to serve the biodiversity collections community and the NSF for the last 13 years. As we enter the last two years of our current grant, we want to understand the community’s needs and the appetite for the biodiversity community, philanthropists, government agences and corporations to sustain our work.
Upcoming Events
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BioDigiCon 2025
iDigBio is pleased to announce the inaugural in-person Biodiversity Digitization Conference. The theme of the conference is workforce development, capacity building, and enhancement for all phases of the Biodiversity Specimen Digitization Value Chain.
Learn & Participate
About iDigBio
The mission of iDigBio is to promote and catalyze digitization, mobilization, and use of data about biodiversity specimens through training, open data, and innovative uses of these data.
iDigBio was created as the national coordinating center in the Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) grant in 2011 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the University of Florida. Florida State University and the University of Kansas are grant subawardees. iDigBio is a GBIF Other Associate Participant Node.