The 2nd LifeWatchGreece Data Management Workshop

The 2nd Lifewatch Data Management workshop took place from 16-20 March 2015 in the premises of the Department of Zoology in the University of Athens. About 25 Lifewatch data mangers from all over Greece participated in the course.
The workshop focused on techniques of data rescue - digitization and standardization of information from legacy literature on Greek and Mediterranean biodiversity. The participants were trained in extracting data and metadata from these articles, standardize the data to a common format, georeference locations and perform the required quality control. The hands-on sessions comprised most of the workshop, and only occasional demonstrations of techniques and tools were given by the trainers. Discussions on the re-publication of several historical datasets as data papers were also part of the workshop, and the participants expressed great interest in this form of data publication. The week resulted in over 20 digitized datasets which will subsequently be integrated in the databases of the Mediterreanean Ocean Biogeographic Information System (MedOBIS) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, to be freely accessible and re-usable by other researchers.