DiSSCo Prepare - Distributed System of Scientific Collections Preparatory Phase Project

DiSSCo Norway will, as a Norwegian node of DiSSCo RI, contribute to making approximately 1.5 billion objects in scientific collections across Europe (natural history incl. geology) accessible for everyone. The goal of DiSSCo Norway is to mobilise and connect Norwegian collections to DiSSCo, thus mobilising all Norwegian natural history collections and providing access to the international collections stored by DiSSCo. Efficient and seamless access will help support UN's Global Goals and Targets in addition to the EU commission's and Norwegian Government's policies. Combined, the collections housed by the DiSSCo Norway consortium hold a total of approximately 10 million botanical, geological and zoological specimens. Collections of the Norwegian museums with natural history collections are global in scope, with particular strengths in Norwegian and Arctic material but also with large holdings of global importance from across the World and its oceans. DiSSCo establishes a new world-class EU Research Infrastructure for natural science collections. DiSSCo works for the digital unification of all European natural science (incl. geological) assets under common curation, access policies and practices and aims to make the data compliant with the FAIR principles, viz. findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. As such, DiSSCo enables the transformation of a fragmented landscape of the many crucial natural science collections into an integrated knowledge base that provides interconnected hard evidence on the natural world (http://www.dissco.eu). DiSSCo represents the largest ever, formal agreement between natural history museums, botanical gardens and collection-holding universities in the world.

The objective of RCN project 316638 DiSSCo Prepare - Distributed System of Scientific Collections Preparatory Phase Project was to participate in ESFRI DiSSCo Prepare - Distributed System of Scientific Collections Preparatory Phase Project and build a Norwegian consortium for participation in DiSSCo RI. The result of project 316638 is the submitted RCN INFRA proposal ES730784 Distributed System for Scientific Collections - Norwegian node that is currently pending review.

The Distributed System of Scientific Collections is a new world-class Research Infrastructure (RI) for natural science collections. The DiSSCo RI works for the digital unification of all European natural science assets under common curation and access policies and practices that aim to make the data easily Findable, more Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). As such, DiSSCo enables the transformation of a fragmented landscape of the crucial natural science collections into an integrated knowledge base that provides interconnected hard evidence on the natural world. DiSSCo represents the largest ever formal agreement between natural history museums, botanical gardens and collection-holding universities in the world.