Virtual Museum end of citizen science activities

Due to circumstances beyond our control the VM will close its operations at the end of 2024.
VM uploads will remain open until Sunday 1^st of December. Expert panel identifications will remain open until the 8^th of December.

Long term archival

1. All VM records and photographs will be archived at UCT Libraries. UCT-Lib will use its ZivaHub and Ibali platforms for long term curation and public availability.

2. VM data will also be uploaded into the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) for distribution data availability to the wider research community.

3. VM records and photos will also be archived at Observation.org.

4. VM URLs to specific records, as used in numerous scientific publications, websites and blogs will be curated to provide direct links to the records archived at UCT-Lib and Observation.org.

5. All Citizen Scientists and observers are free to upload their data and images to any of the other online platforms such as iNaturalist if they choose to.

We would like to encourage VM observers to sign into either Observation.org or (as some observers have requested) iNaturalist to continue their valuable citizen science contributions.

Observation.org

Observation.org is a global biodiversity platform for citizen science and monitoring. The use of this platform will give observers who wish to sign into Observation.org the opportunity to transfer and link their VM records to their profile in this portal.

Once you have signed into this platform, please let us know so that your VM records can be linked to your Observation.org profile during the record migration process. Please email your Observation.org username (login email) to Rene Navarro (rene.navarro@uct.ac.za) or Jana Tippett (jana.tippett@thebdi.org) to ensure that this process goes smoothly.

We thank all of you that have already supplied this information.