Recipient Organization
WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY
886 CHESTNUT RIDGE RD RM 202
MORGANTOWN,WV 26505-2742
Performing Department
University Administration
Non Technical Summary
This project will promote creation of a US Virtual Herbarium (USVH) to provide data from the nation's plant specimen collection facilities. Herbaria are rich sources of fine-grained information about plant diversity and biogeography and a key resource for educating students. USVH will make these resources available to scientists, consultants, students, and members of the public via the Web. Placing images of herbarium specimens on line will increase access to collection materials and facilitate accurate plant identification. This will impact research and education in systematics, ecology, land management, conservation biology, biogeography, and biodiversity informatics. The resources of USVH will be compiled from regional network nodes. Workshops will be offered to disseminate information about specimen digitization in support of regional network progress. An important aspect of these networks will be to involve students in the area of biodiversity informatics. The data being captured are of value to multiple audiences. A newsletter will be distributed as outreach to the various stakeholders. USVH will work with colleagues and teachers to develop educational modules that employ the resources made available by the project.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The goal of this project is to accelerate development of USVH that provides access to the specimen information in the nations herbaria by promoting collaboration among herbaria, existing and proposed regional networks, and providers of national resources. To achieve this goal, the steering committee has established the following objectives:
Increase the number of US herbaria digitizing their collections and making their data available to GBIF through the US Node that is maintained by NBII from about 50 to at least 500.
Help all proposed 12 regional networks become operational by 2013, i.e., have the ability to integrate data from multiple herbaria in their region, provide it to the national node, and provide tools for answering questions about the plants in their region using data from intra- and extra-regional herbaria. At present, three networks integrate information from herbaria in their region
none integrate information from extra-regional herbaria.
Identify the critical functions for the national portal as perceived by stake holders and promote development of the relevant software.
Create a highly visual and public resource for reporting participation in and progress toward developing USVH.
Project Methods
This project focuses on three different levels: aiding individual herbaria in digitizing collections and making these resources Web-accessible, integrating information from multiple herbaria at a regional portal, and sharing data through a national portal. Digitizing collections: Digitizing a specimen comprises two aspects, imaging the specimen as a whole and then storing the label information in a database. Initial USVH activity will be to contact/survey U.S. herbaria to determine progress in digitizing and sharing their information. Later programs will involve workshops on methods and standards for digitizing herbarium specimens and making information and images available. Integrating resources: Merging information from multiple herbaria requires data clean up, accommodating differing taxonomic treatments, georeferencing, image examination and measuring. Other desirable resources are a list of species of concern and their corresponding states, timelines and shape files for counties, locality gazetteers, and software for automating the sharing of records. USVH will promote the organization of regional herbarium networks, facilitating collaboration and data integration, by holding an annual meeting of herbarium representatives for project review and for planning future activity. Sharing digitized information: The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) have developed internationally recognized standards for sharing biodiversity information. Most US herbaria export their data according to the DarwinCore standard. This project focuses on development of human interactions needed to create USVH by improving dissemination of information on the procedures involved. Support for software development, hardware purchases, and data entry will be sought from a variety of other sources.