The Notes from Nature team has been thinking a lot about how to take some bold next steps to make transcription faster and better. To that end, we have launched something of an outlier expedition. This new expedition, which we have called “Label Babel” asks for help delineating the main label on herbarium sheets, which is usually – but not always! – in the bottom right corner. We also are asking you to tell us if the label is “all typewritten”, “all handwritten” or “both handwritten and typewritten”.

So you might be thinking “Why is Notes from Nature asking you to do this?” The short answer is that we think we can use machine learning approaches to detect where a label is, and the type of content (handwritten, typewritten, both) on the label. Your work helps us develop a training dataset for this machine learning effort. If we can indeed build this machine learning approach, it would allow us to have a quick way to sort different herbarium sheets and use the right Optical Character Recognition or Handwriting Detection Tools depending on the label.

We hope this is a fun diversion from the usual task and that the work you are doing here can help us build a better Notes from Nature. We will let you know how we do building the machine learning tools from the initial efforts here as soon as we can.

— The Notes from Nature Team

WeDigBio 2018 was a great success! There were many productive onsite events. For example, the Field Museum welcomed over 400 people during this years WeDigBio! Notes from Nature received over 16,500 transcriptions during the four day event period. We also saw a lot of pre- and post- event activity which resulted in over 24,000 transcriptions during a one week period!

We want to thank the WeDigBio organizers, all the event hosts and most of all the volunteers that participated onsite or online. A special mention goes out to Notes from Nature volunteer am.zooni who is always willing to help in so many ways. We also want to thank the Zooniverse team for always keeping things running smoothly during times with such heavy site traffic.

We are already looking forward to WeDigBio 2019! In the mean time we have lots of great expeditions that need attention.

You can learn more about WeDigBio by checking out this paper published about the annual event.

— The Notes from Nature Team

We closed out WeDigBio 2018 with 2,835 transcriptions! That put us at 16,865 transcriptions for the entire event. This surpassed our goal of 16,000.

We saw two expeditions with over 700 transcriptions during day 4. These were Fantastic Ferns! Celebrate Field Museum’s 125th Anniversary by Unlocking Tropical Diversity from the Caribbean, Africa and Australasia with 758 and Geography: US State Spotter — Lost Legumes (II) with 740.

There are still 19 great expeditions to work on! Two are currently above 90% and could use some effort to bring them to completion.

— The Notes from Nature Team

We are in our final hours of WeDigBio 2018 and we hope that we can get to 16,000 transcriptions for the event. At the time of posting we are just over 15,000.

Please take a few minutes and help us reach our goal of 16K (or maybe even more)!

There are still 19 great expeditions to work on! Every single transcription helps us reach our goal!

— The Notes from Nature Team

WeDigBio 2018 day 3 was another big one at Notes from Nature. Notes from Nature received 2,727 transcriptions which is way above our daily average. So far we are over 14,000 transcriptions for the entire event!

We saw four expeditions with over 200 transcriptions during day 3. At the top were the Fantastic Ferns! Celebrate Field Museum’s 125th Anniversary by Unlocking Tropical Diversity from the Caribbean, Africa and Australasia with 343 and Geography: US State Spotter — Lost Legumes (II) with 466.

Remember to check #WeDigBio and @WeDigBio on Twitter through out the event for more exciting developments!

— The Notes from Nature Team

WeDigBio 2018 day 2 was another huge success! NfN received 6,640 transcriptions. That is our second most productive day ever. We are anxious to see what happens in day 3.

We also want to give a special mention to the expedition with the most transcriptions during day 2. Plants of Arkansas: The Delta and Crowley’s Ridge Flora (Part IV) received over 1,460 transcriptions!

Remember to check #WeDigBio and @WeDigBio on Twitter through out the event for more exciting developments!

— The Notes from Nature Team

We have a special new WeDigBio phenology expedition called Fall Showoff: The Seaside Goldenrod. This is created for an event at the Florida Museum of Natural History taking place tomorrow.

Image Credit: Sam Fraser-Smith

Give it a try and let us know what you think in the Labs section of Talk. You can also learn more by reading this post by Molly Phillips, iDigBio Education, Outreach & Diversity Coordinator at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

— The Notes from Nature Team

WeDigBio 2018 got off to a great start! NfN received 4,663 transcriptions on day 1. That is our third most productive day ever. We are thrilled and can’t wait to see what happens with day 2.

We also want to give a special mention to the expedition with the most transcriptions during day 1. WeDigFLPlants’ Magnolias, Pawpaws, and Relatives of Florida received over 1,000 transcriptions (1104 to be exact)!

Remember to check #WeDigBio and @WeDigBio on Twitter through out the event for more exciting developments!

— The Notes from Nature Team

We are very excited about some news coverage that the Field Museum got about their WeDigBio event. Check out the video and story linked below. The event currently has over 300 people registered!

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/field-museum-volunteers-plant-specimens-catalog-497861591.html

Many of us have heard the phrase “Sedges have edges; rushes are round; grasses are hollow right up from the ground” in field biology classes or native plant walks. The saying helps us to distinguish the three graminoid families: the rushes (Juncaceae), grasses (Poaceae), and sedges (Cyperaceae). The sedges are a common sight in Virginia but their diversity often goes unappreciated. Like grasses, many of their distinguishing characteristics are minute.

This expedition will help the Virginia Tech Massey Herbarium’s specimen digitization project. We’ve been fortunate to collect a lot of sedges across Virginia over the years. This bounty leaves us a lot of transcribing though! Your contributions will add the full collection information to these specimens so that they are fully accessible online. Hopefully the transcriptions will help you become familiar with sedge diversity along the way!

Photo credits: Thanks to Tom Potterfield for allowing us to use his sedge photographs to illustrate the expedition (http://bit.ly/2Py1GPI).

— Jordan Metzgar,Curator of the Massey Herbarium (VPI)

[Editors note: This expedition is being launched as part of WeDigBio to support an event at Virginia Tech Massey Herbarium]