First-ever herbarium transcription day is a success

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Over 20 students, faculty, and friends of Radford University worked together to make the first-ever herbarium transcription day a big success! The herbarium is a plant collection in the biology department, with specimens going back to the 1880s. Students in current classes continue to contribute specimens to this growing collection. 

Over 200 specimens were entered into the herbarium database in a single day - making more progress in digitization in a day than we've made in the past year. 

Photo, Left: Students, alumni, and friends of RU are actively entering data from herbarium specimens. The data were formatted and corrected in real-time, and will soon be available as a searchable on-line database.

 

 

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With >7500 specimens in the herbarium collection, there is a international charge to make museum data available in a digital format. In that way, the specimens and their data are not only of use to RU students and faculty but also to researchers around the world.

In a way, the herbarium is a living library of specimens and their data, telling stories about the history of the localities/habitats in which they were collected.

There are about 800 plant specimens waiting to be digitized before our collection is fully photographed, cataloged, and digitized.

Photo, Left: RU students Karissa Ellis and Jasemine Brown are numbering and photographing specimens before they are passed along to the datat entry helpers in the photo above.

 

Over 200 specimens were entered into the herbarium database in a single day - making more progress in digitization in a day than we've made in the past year. There are about 800 plant specimens waiting to be digitized before our collection is fully photographed, cataloged, and digitized.
There are about 800 plant specimens waiting to be digitized before our collection is fully photographed, cataloged, and digitized.
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The specimen to the left is one of the >200 that were digitized. Note that standards for color and scale are placed in each photo. All data from the specimen are added to our database. This specimen was collected in 1951, making it about 68 years old. 

 

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Mar 31, 2019
Karen Powers
540.831.5146
biology@radford.edu