There is certainly no shortage of online training materials. However, the problem is usually finding the right material.
You may be looking for an introduction to research data management, a course on publishing collection data, guidance on metadata standards, a tutorial on georeferencing, or perhaps something rather specific about digitisation workflows. A search can quickly lead to dozens of websites, repositories, videos, documentation pages and online courses.
Which one is actually relevant to natural science collections or your needs?
Is it introductory or advanced?
Is it a video, a tutorial or a longer course?
Is it available in English or German?
And perhaps most importantly for anyone who wants to reuse teaching material: what is the licence?
At some point, finding the training material starts to feel like a research project of its own.
So we started collecting materials
As part of the Knowledge Management in the WiNoDa project, we created a curated overview of online courses, training materials and Open Educational Resources relevant to natural science collections.
Rather than creating yet another long list of links, we organised the resources in one table so that they can be compared more easily.
The collection currently covers topics including:
- Data management
- Data quality
- Collections and metadata
- Tools and methods
- Data science
- Ethics and legal issues
For each resource, the table provides information such as the title, a short description, provider, publication or update year, format, language, licence and a direct link to the original material.
The aim is simple: you should be able to scan the table and decide relatively quickly whether a resource might be useful to you.
What can you find there?
The collection brings together materials from a range of organisations and research infrastructures working with biodiversity, collections, cultural heritage and research data.
For example, the list includes resources from GBIF, iDigBio, DiSSCo, TDWG, NFDI4Biodiversity, NFDI4Objects, DARIAH, digiS and the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC).
The topics are equally varied.
You can find material on publishing data through GBIF, Darwin Core standards, digitisation workflows, georeferencing, persistent identifiers, authority data, image metadata, file organisation, research data management, sensitive species data and working with spatial data.
So whether you are a researcher trying to understand a particular data-management task, a curator working with collection data, a data steward looking for material to recommend, or someone preparing training of your own, there may be something useful hiding in the table.
Publicly available does not automatically mean openly reusable.
One detail we deliberately included is licensing information.
A resource that can be viewed freely on the internet is not automatically an Open Educational Resource that can be copied, modified and reused.
For that reason, we only record a licence when one is explicitly stated by the provider. Where no licence could be identified, the table says so and is up to the user to make further decisions. This may seem like a small detail, but it becomes rather important when you are searching not only for something to learn from but also for material that you would like to adapt for your own course or workshop.
A starting point, not an exhaustive collection.
The collection is not intended to be a complete catalogue of everything that has ever been published about natural science collection data. Instead, it is intended as a curated starting point. The overview can grow as useful resources are identified, new materials are published and existing resources are updated.
Explore the full collection in the GFBio Knowledge Base:
Natural Science Collections: online courses and Open Educational Resources
As Knowledge Manager and Helpdesk Support at WiNoDa, I facilitate access to tools, training, and expert guidance in research data management across disciplines. With a strong background as a data steward, I support researchers in making their data FAIR, well-documented, and sustainably reusable.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6048-9272