BIOSPEX is a base camp for launching, advertising, and managing targeted efforts to digitize the world's 3 billion biodiversity research specimens in ways that involve the public. Such specimens include fish in jars, plants on sheets, fossils in drawers, insects on pins, and many other types. “Digitization” is a broad reference to creating digital data about the physical specimens and includes things like recording the what, when, where from the specimen label or describing the life stage of the specimen at time of collection. BIOSPEX enables you to package projects in one or a series of digitization expeditions, launch the expeditions at crowdsourcing tools, widely recruit others to participate, and layer resources on the experience to advance science literacy. In the end, you can download the new data for specimen curation, research, conservation, natural resource management, public policy, or other activities.

iDigInfo Director Austin Mast serves as project lead for BIOSPEX, and iDigInfo Application Developer Robert Bruhn maintains the BIOSPEX software.