Herbaria in Taiwan and the UK (4): Digitisation
Imaging specimens and building the records
Restating that I’m not a expert of plant taxonomist, I just share my experiences here.
According to ‘Index Herbariorum‘ edited by New York Botanical Garden, There are 4,035 herberia and around 400 million specimens worldwide. It is the dierection that every herarium struggling is digitised and openly accessed such huge data. In particular, the research on taxonomy, plant geography and phylogeny need to review several specimens from different areas. It will improve research development, if it’s possible to access digital images or collection information in advance.
HAST: Current Situation in Small Institution
I think that the difference from taxonomists is the work of staffs (like me) usually tie with digitisation, the reason is we have to ensure the information are available online eventually. I roughly recognise digitised working as ‘Frontend input’ and ‘Backend output’, the former makes data digitisation (usually erected at interior system), and latter publish data (ensure data follow Darwin Core Standard) and even link to exterior platform (e.g. GBIF). But I only learn about the former.
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Now, the pending specimens are alomost digitised well, I subsequently need to archive label information that include several main blocks belowing:
- Scientific name, determied by/ date
- Collector(s), collector code, collection date
- Lacation: country, location details, elevation, latitude and longitude
- Environment: vegetation, habitat, shadity, humidity, diversity
- Habit, plant height, flowers and fruits description
- Other: duplication, exchange, DNA, cultivaiton
It is ideal to make all label information digitised, so that I do struggle to file every data initially. However, that is not practically dur to considering the whole business at herbarium (no more time to deal with other things). To be honest, we only need to ensure scientific name, collector(s), collector code, collection date and location. Provided that digital image of specimen are also published at the same time, someone can get more information of images directly by using the searching engine.
Kew: Vision of Big Institution
Digitisation Team
Facing to a bigger and more complicate collection, Kew Herbarium require an advanced digitisation method. They even erected a Digitisation Team to be responsible to deal with digitisation and vital data. As my colleague who involed in the team said ‘In reality, the background of team staffs are very various, and some people are even not related to biology’. That made me surprised but also reasonable. The salary paid by such famous institution is not as expected, but it still provide a rare opportunity for people to work at a top research center.
The digitisation team’s workstation moves around frequently. For example, if they’re processing specimens from Euphorbiaceae for a period, they’ll set up in Wing A. Once that’s done, the entire setup relocates to the next taxon. Juat like hermit crabs.
Volunteer Online
Though my major task was record traits from specimens then, I still worked with plenty of specimen informations. When I backed to Taiwan, I also acted a digitisation volunteer online to help pushing that project. The working content is similar to what I’m doing at HAST now, but Kew use Digivol to transcribe and organise data of specimens. It is pity when encounter I was doing military service, and I only contributed to fewer loading. Until to I finished the service. the Kew digital project was also ending.
Next, lets watch the plant materials on the sheets!?
