Format: ORAL

Celia C. Aceae

School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Herbaria represent vast repositories of data that have the potential to contribute to research across biological disciplines. The value of herbaria and the data of the specimens within depends largely on the accessibility and quality of this information. As collections become more widely available through large-scale digitisation initiatives, it is integral to develop tools that can help researchers and curators access, review, assess, and annotate specimen data and related information with ease. Additionally, as specimens are included in nomenclatural and taxonomic events, digitised collections and data repositories must reflect these changes rapidly to ensure the most accurate distribution of information. Here, we trialled the tool Echinopscis, an extensible notebook for open science on specimens (Nicolson Lucas, 2022). Echinopscis has provided researchers and curators with a new and effective way to access specimen determinations within other institutions across the globe and has been used to facilitate note-taking and data tracking. Curators of herbaria are limited by resource availability and level of training, meaning that curation standards vary within herbaria and differ greatly between herbaria. Institutions, researchers, curators, and collectors have different methods of recording data in the field, in the herbarium, and in the digitisation process. Small variations in the presentation of data can have vast impacts on how data is sorted and accessed digitally. In a time marked by worldwide open access information sharing, there is a vast need for more global standards in herbarium curation. Here, we present recommendations for global standards in data recording and identify opportunities for the development of new tools to assist and facilitate the curation process within herbaria.