Kendall Biggs
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Jennifer Bauer
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Museum of Paleontology / LSA
Program: UROP
Session: Session 1 (9:00am – 9:50am)
Authors:
Abstract
Data related to historical people, objects, and information are often physically and digitally disaggregated. The U-M Museum of Paleontology is home to 4 million fossil specimens and is actively working on digitizing the fossils and their associated records. Digitizing and curating this massive amount of data is time-consuming and requires significant effort. More specifically, every fossil specimen has a piece of spatial data, its locality. This information is historical and as such does not have coordinates for the location. This then requires georeferencing through GEOLocate and using ArcGISOnline and Google Maps tools to get an accurate estimate of location. The curated data can answer immeasurable questions. I am particularly interested in understanding and mapping the history of former U-M faculty, Alexander Winchell (1824–1891). Many viewpoints of people during this time period were wrought with problematic and often racist ideas, we will discuss Winchell’s history and controversy as it relates to his career and collection of material. Alexander Winchell was a United States geologist and professor of physics, geology, zoology, and botany at U-M. He also worked as the director of the Michigan Geological Survey for a number of years. There are more than 5,000 specimens credited to Winchell in the database. These specimen data allow us the ability to map Winchell’s work throughout his life. Pulling together disaggregated data in a cohesive way allows anyone with an interest to learn more about an organization, individual, or topic. In addition, these data will be made publicly available, easing communication across scientific disciplines.
