Representing the largest-ever formal agreement between natural history museums, botanical gardens, and collection-holding universities, DiSSCo is a new European research infrastructure that aims to unify natural science assets under common curation and access policies and practices. The DiSSCo network currently includes 119 participating institutions from 21 countries that together hold more than 1.5 billion specimens.
The UiO Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo represents Norway in DiSSCo as the National Task Force and will participate in the DiSSCo preparatory phase on behalf of an emerging DiSSCo consortium in Norway, including all of the Norwegian university museums.
DiSSCo was formally included in the June 2018 update for the EU ESFRI roadmap for European research infrastructures. DiSSCo Prepare will be launched early in 2019 to be the main vehicle towards enabling the construction of DiSSCo. Several EU-funded projects are already aligned and linked to the overall objectives of DiSSCo as summarized in the overview illustration below. UiO-NHM currently participates in Mobilise and DiSSCo Prepare – in addition to hosting the national GBIF Node for Norway.
Presentation of DiSSCo at the UiO Natural History Museum in Oslo in October 2019 [Download PPTX PDF]
See also slides from the UiO Natural History Museum science retreat in March 2020 on FAIR and open biodiversity collection data management. [Download PDF]
