Ten lessons learned from the mass digitisation of a herbarium collection

• DOI: 10.3897/phytokeys.244.120112
• Publication Date: 2024-07-02T16:19:33Z
• Authors: Sofie De Smedt; Ann Bogaerts; Niko De Meeter; Mathias Dillen; Henry Engledow; Paul Van Wambeke; Frederik Leliaert; Quentin Groom
• Keywords: Herbarium; Digital collections; Collections management; Special collections

Worldwide, herbaria maintain collections of reference specimens representing global plant diversity. These are a valuable resource for fundamental botanical research and applied scientific across various disciplines, play significant role in addressing major societal challenges such as biodiversity conservation. The digitisation herbarium their online dissemination is one the most important recent developments curation these collections. Digitisation significantly enhances access to community facilitates large-scale analysis data. also provides means preserving physical specimens, it reduces need handling transportation. Rapid technological have greatly accelerated rate databasing digital imaging Meise Botanic Garden recently completed six-year project mass digitise its about 3 million mounted on sheets through this process we learned lessons. We captured our experience 10 recommendations other collection-holding institutions take inspiration from they start planning own efforts. present case studies where delve deeper into certain topics examples.