The 2017 annual meeting of the American Malacological Society (AMS) was preceded by an iDigBio/National Science Foundation supported workshop on digitizing mollusk specimen data in non-federal Natural History Collections in the USA and Canada. The AMS President's Symposium invited mollusk researchers, curators and collection managers, who are creating and employing digital specimen data in research to highlight the many new avenues that are opening up due to the growing landscape of digital data available. Here we describe the symposium, the workshop, and the workshop outcomes. Among the priorities identifi ed were imaging of primary types, expanding taxonomic authority fi les and initiating collaborative georeferencing.