Transcript Slide 1

Digitization and the richness of type
specimens at the Paris Herbarium -
Spotlight on the Global Plants Initiative
Pascale Chesselet & Jean-Noël Labat
Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle
Paris, France
Global Plants
Initiative
The aim of GPI:
To build a comprehensive online research
tool aggregating and linking scholarly
botanical resources around the world
http://plants.jstor.org
International collaboration
148 institutes in 52 countries
High-Resolution Type Specimens and Supporting Materials
24 bit colour, 600 dpi, Tiff
Original scans ± 200 Meg
Flashpix technology ± 50-80 Meg – multiple versions of files within itself
FSI Viewer
High resolution
8 X what can be seen with the naked eye
Herbier National
de Paris (P & PC)
11 million specimens
> 600 000 types
Vascular Plants &
Cryptogams
Paris, Kew, New York, Geneva ………
Type specimen digitization
Image scan
Search for types
Verification
Bar code
Label data capture
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort
Voyage to the Middle East 1700-1702
Data
Dissections
Detail
measurements
Annotations
Original polynomial
Types of economically important plants
Siphonia brasiliensis Willd.
Triticum durum Desf.
Total: 978 108 specimens digitized of which 120 773 are types
Geographic coverage of type secimens
Vascular Plants
Cryptogams
America
North Africa
Asia
Tropical Africa
Oceania
Madagascar
New Caledonia
Europe
African Plants Initiative
453 609 objects
118 collections
114 contributors
31 countries
4 years
± 60 000 species
API - Taxonomic backbone
JSTOR Plant Science
At the end of the project, the database should host 2.2 million type specimens
that will be digitized, ingested and available on the website by 2012
Features of GPI
Linking related materials - literature on Jstor
Several languages: English, French, Portuguese
& Spanish
Materials available: from archival documents to
periodicals, books, reports, manuscripts,
reference works, maps, specimens,
illustrations….
Advanced online tools
…and more….
How people are using GPI
Research (GPI, JStor)
Discovery (microscope surrogate)
Measuring & recording measurements
Species identification
Plant uses
Sharing
Editing and refining the data
Outcome
Comprehensive datasets
Data repatriation
Tools for taxonomists
Building capacity - taxonomists
Fundamental species data (types)
available world-wide