The Herbarium’s Role in Climate Change, Conservation Policies
Posted in Science on December 29th, 2009 by Plant Talk – 1 Comment |
Barbara Thiers, Ph.D., is Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium and oversees the C.V. Starr Virtual Herbarium. |
Part 3 in a 3-part series
Read Part 1 and Part 2
During the past 15 years, my staff and I have devoted a great deal of effort in the creation of the C.V. Starr Virtual Herbarium, which is an on-line catalog of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium. Entries in the Virtual Herbarium are created by transcribing the data from the specimen label into an electronic database, and often capturing a digital image of the specimens as well.
We have digitized just over 1 million of our 7.3 million specimens so far. Although we don’t know exactly what objective drives each of the 8,400 daily visits to the Virtual Herbarium, we deduce from reviewing the sources of these “hits” that most users are seeking basic biodiversity information. read more »