i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

I came across an article about the BIObus, which is currently travelling across North America collecting insects and other invertebrates. The BIObus supports the Barcode of Life Project, which is a collaborative effort among researchers to create a digital identification system for life on Earth. Scientists take tissue samples from each specimen, extract DNA and then register the sample into a global database.

Here's the current intro to chapter 9, all about the Mütter Museum and its very strange collections. If you're ever in Philly and have the chance to go, totally do it, it's amazing.

http://chronicle.com/article/Googles-Book-Search-A/48245/

I dug up this almost year old op-ed published in The Chronicle of higher education because it highlights some of the most challenging problems associated with metadata, classification and describing collections.