A GBIF dark country is one that provides no or few biodiversity records to GBIF. This limits development of resources for studying their biodiversity and engagement in the biodiversity sciences by their people. Many of the GBIF dark countries have no history of digitization even within a collection let alone a viable collections network. They often do, however, have good collections. We have established two Symbiota-(
http://Symbiota.org) based web sites OpenHerbarium.org (
http://openherbarium.org) and OpenZooMuseum.org (http://OpenZooMuseum.org) to accommodate records from such collections. We have found, however, increasing digitization, requires persuading those close to the collections, from collectors to curators and department heads, of the value that comes from sharing data and what “high quality data†means in a digital age. We are in the process of developing open access resources for such purposes. They will be made available for use both on- and offline and as videos and pdf documents because most such countries suffer from poor and/or intermittent internet access. One reason for developing these resources is to enable offering more effective workshops, ones that end with at least some participants agreeing to collaborate on a project of common interest.
