This post has been written by Allyson Lister, our FAIRsharing content and community lead. The image of Allyson is courtesy of the NBN Trust.
Last week, I presented FAIRsharing at the annual conference for the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) Trust, with more than 130 attendees at the Natural History Museum. The National Biodiversity Network has been focused on wildlife data sharing since 2000, and is the UK’s largest partnership for nature, with over 200 members and more than 200 million wildlife records available through the NBN Atlas (homepage, FAIRsharing record).
While I was keen to present FAIRsharing standing next to the giant T-Rex, I was to be ever-so-slightly disappointed as we were not holding the conference in his shadow, but rather at the Flett Theatre. However, the Flett Theatre was more than suitable, having both a comfortable lecture hall and space for viewing stands and chatting. At the NBN conference, I focused on how FAIRsharing and our 1000+ community of users and community curators update and enrich our resource records, with a focus on biodiversity. FAIRsharing works closely with its user community to aid discoverability of their data resources and to help enable FAIR data. The relationships we build (both at a social and a data level) are at the core of FAIRsharing, making it an essential part of FAIR research data management. Our collaboration with the biodiversity community is a prime example of the success of such community engagement.
For more details, please see my presentation linked from the NBN conference website, as slides from all presentations are now available from the NBN conference website. A few of my personal highlights of the day include:
- Visiting the Nature Metrics stand, where I had a lovely chat with Dan Swan (@drdanielswan, Head of Bioinformatics and Data @NatureMetrics) – we used to work together at Newcastle Uni!
- Learning about our native amphibians and reptiles with @froglifers and ARG UK at their stand
- Speaking with Tim Hirsch from GBIF about data archiving, digital collections and about the his colleagues Kyle Copas, Annie Elkjær Ørum-Kristensen and Joe Miller, who have collaborated with us so effectively as early adopters of the FAIRsharing Community Curator Programme.
- Of course, saying hello to the giant sloth as we left for the day!
