Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia will digitize and preserve years of field recordings of grasshopper and cricket songs (Orthoptera), making them available for scientists, students, and interested visitors. These reel-to-reel and audiocassette field recordings feature insects in their natural habitats from the 1960s to the 1990s, including in threatened and disappearing habitats in the Hawaiian Islands, the American west and Africa. The project supports the hiring of a Curatorial Assistant as well as and 5 full-time co-op positions for Drexel University undergraduate students as part of the collaboration with the Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts and Design sound lab to digitize the analog tapes. The species data will then be added to an open-source content management system to be used to inform future educational initiatives focusing on biodiversity, evolution, climate change, and the importance of non-traditional collections.