KB S S Blediversly Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 8: e142801 Sarma doi: 10.3897/biss.8.142801 Conference Abstract Biocollections Managers: Perspectives and Processes for Curating Physical Collections and their Digital Objects Bradley Wade Bishop}, Jaxx Fox?, Sidney W Gavel*, Emily Chapin?, Sarah Kansa$ $ University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Knoxville, United States of America § University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States of America Corresponding author: Bradley Wade Bishop (wade. bishop@utk.edu) Received: 26 Nov 2024 | Published: 27 Nov 2024 Citation: Bishop B, Fox J, Gavel S, Chapin E, Kansa S (2024) Biocollections Managers: Perspectives and Processes for Curating Physical Collections and their Digital Objects. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 8: e142801. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.8.142801 Abstract Natural history collections retain a plethora of samples and objects for research purposes across domains. The data derived from these physical collections informs scientific discovery, but often aggregating data within even a single domain relies on navigating institutional and discipline-specific catalogs and repositories. Differing curation practices, shifts in methods for measurement, and changing theoretical and funding priorities, make the United States biocollections infrastructure a patchwork quilt of objects and their associated metadata. While the efforts of many have greatly improved the system, it still needs additional investment in these invaluable collections. In today’s context of possible data reuse in Al-ready test beds and public access, building a cyberinfrastructure atop this foundation should include revisiting the existing practices in preserving, conserving, and managing the physical collections and the subsequent research data curation processes of the digital objects (Bishop and Hank 2016). Scientific domains that rely on physical collections to create knowledge and work within today’s machine-actionable context need more FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Resuable)-aligned data that also accounts for ethical reuse (i.e., CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics) Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (Carroll et al. 2020)), as well as funding agency expectations for data that are as open as possible. © Bishop B etal. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 2 Bishop B et al The purpose of the Institute of Museum and Library Services study is to understand the curation perceptions and behaviors of managers of physical collections across biocollections to inform cross-disciplinary research, data management services, and resources. Six focus groups were conducted with eighteen participants across six physical biocollections: entomology, two herbaria, herpetology, ichthyology, and palaeontology. Participants responded to open-ended questions about their collection overview, storage, data collection, metadata, organization, findability, and reuse. Results indicate that these natural history collection managers use global metadata and storage standards to increase discoverability but reuse of these physical collections and associated digital objects require more investment in personnel and cyberinfrastructure to enhance reusability of these invaluable natural history collections. Keywords data curation profiles, natural history collections, data management, storage, metadata, organization, data discovery, data reuse Presenting author Bradley Wade Bishop Presented at SPNHC-TDWG 2024 Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the various physical collections managers for their time spent sharing their expertise and experiences, as well as Andrea Thomer, University of Arizona, who assisted with method design and recruiting. Grant title Collaborative Analysis Liaison Librarianship; Life Long Learning; Institute of Museum and Library Services Hosting institution University of Tennessee-Knoxville Biocollections Managers: Perspectives and Processes for Curating Physical ... Conflicts of interest The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. References ° Bishop BW, Hank CF (2016) Data curation profiling of biocollections. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 53 (1): 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1002/ pra2.2016.14505301046 ° Carroll SR, Garba |, Figueroa-Rodriguez OL, Holbrook J, Lovett R, Materechera S, Parsons M, Raseroka K, Rodriguez-Lonebear D, Rowe R, Sara R, Walker JD, Anderson J, Hudson M (2020) The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. Data Science Journal 19 (1): 43. https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-043