Format: ORAL

Priscila A. Reis, Ellie Graves, Marie-Helene Weech, Sarah Phillips, Clare Drinkell, Alison Moore

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, United Kingdom

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew), established in 1852, is home to one of the worlds largest dried flora and fungi collections, safeguarding around 8.5 million specimens. It encapsulates a remarkable global coverage, containing over 95% of vascular plant genera and representing around 60% of the worlds currently known fungi. Significantly, the herbarium serves as an invaluable repository of information for understanding the diversity of the worlds living organisms, encompassing their morphological, genetic, physiological and ecological variations. However, most of these botanical treasures remain hidden behind cupboard doors, accessible primarily to academic communities through on-site visits. In turn, this constrains the research potential inherent in the collection. As part of a four-year digitisation program, RBG Kew is recognising this urgency and adapting to the digital era. The objective is to generate high-resolution images and data of the entire herbarium and fungarium collections, ensuring the preservation of the original specimens while unlocking global accessibility. This large-scale digitisation initiative involves overcoming substantial challenges, including the adaptation of workflows to address issues such as mould, pests, and damaged specimens. The Senior Curator Botanists in Digitisation are crucial to the success of the project. They maintain the integrity of the collection by providing intensive training and guidance to all digitisers involved, and by establishing protocols for resolving large-scale issues encountered during digitisation and reporting those issues to the appropriate team or individual. They also link the digitisation project and the core curatorial teams, ensuring constant communication on progress and mediating access to the collections for research while they are being digitised. The endeavour involves not just the conversion of physical specimens into digital formats but also requires the development of strategies to contend with the complexities presented by the collections varied age and condition.