Worldwide Engagement for Digitizing Biocollections

What is WeDigBio?

Worldwide Engagement for Digitizing Biocollections, or WeDigBio, is a global data campaign, virtual science festival, and local outreach opportunity, all rolled into one. The annual, 4-day WeDigBio events mobilize participants to create digital data about biodiversity specimens, including fish in jars, plants on sheets, insects on pins, and fossils in drawers. During a typical WeDigBio event, some participants are at onsite events hosted by museums, field stations, universities, science classrooms, or other organizations. Those onsite events provide opportunities for research talks or other interactions with those using the newly created data to benefit science and society. Other participants are distributed individually around the world.  For those, we offer a virtual meeting space, which contains live feeds from some of the onsite events and provides another way to interact with scientists and others.  WeDigBio 2024 events will occur from April 18–21 and October 10–13. We are excited to schedule the April event during the Global Citizen Science Month. Check out the online sites at which you can create research data during WeDigBio and throughout the year here

Tentpole Events

A recording for the October WeDigBio 2023 symposium "Energizing Understanding of Biodiversity Close-at-Hand with Hyperlocal Collections" can be found at Vimeo

A recording for the April WeDigBio 2023 symposium "WeDigBio's Why Dig Bio—Major Motivations Across Scale for Digitizing Biodiversity" can be found at Vimeo

A recording for the April WeDigBio 2023 event "A Whirlwind Tour of California Herbaria!" can be found at YouTube

A recording for the April WeDigBio 2022 symposium "The Critical Roles of Libraries in Understanding Earth's Biota" can be found at Vimeo

A recording for the April WeDigBio 2022 event "The Whirlwind Tour of Florida's Biggest Herbaria" can be found at YouTube


WeDigBio Digitization Activity Dashboard


The Buzz


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WeDigBio is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation's Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections Program (Cooperative Agreement EF-1115210). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.