H I S C O M

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H I S C O M

• Flora information Partnership
• Barry Conn
• Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney

Council of Heads of Australian Herbaria
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• Herbaria
• centres of expertise in plant, algal fungal
  biodiversity
• Australian collections - about 6.5 million
• Principal repositories of vouchered data
• Long-standing global and Australia-wide
  cooperative approach,
• specimen exchange and loan
• research across regional interests of herbaria
• publication

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H I S C O M

• Herbarium Information Systems Committee
• Advisory committee to
• Council of Heads of Australian Herbaria (CHAH)
• Aim of HISCOM
• to advise, share, develop and promote all
  aspects of digitisation of herbarium information
• Representatives
• all Government Herbaria
• University Herbaria representative
• New Zealand Herbaria representative
• ad hoc invitees key partners (ABRS, ERIN) and
  collaborators

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• Digitisation of herbarium data
• in Australia

• Since mid 1970s herbarium information
  data-processed
• Digitisation was driven by need for Census and
  Spatial data
• Development of standards important
• In the 1980s HISPID - An herbarium
  specimen-label data interchange standard was
  developed
• HISPID used with specimens exchanged and loaned
  between Australian herbaria

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Australian electronic plant, algal and fungal
data 1

• Censuses
• Vascular plants full Australian
  coverage Nomenclator Australian Plant Name
  Index
• Cryptogams incomplete
• Fungi incomplete, macrofungi current project
  for national census
• Algae national census of marine algae
  freshwater algae

• Specimen data
• 40 of 6.5 million specimens in Australian Govt
  herbaria

• Textual Descriptions
• vascular plants - 65-70 coverage
• Flora of Australia, plus monographs 60
• State floras (SA, NSW, Tas, Vic, ACT 95-99
  coverage
• Regional Qld 62, NT 70, WA 40)

• non-vascular plants, algae, fungi - Overall
  very incomplete coverage
• National handbooks (Flora of Australia)
• Regional or state handbooks (Marine Benthic Flora
  of Southern Australia Lichens of SA Mosses of
  SA)

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Australian electronic plant, algal and fungal
data 2

• Image data
• Image banks few herbaria (CANB, PERTH)
• Other image banks specialists, a number in
  Botanic Gardens, Societies, other Govt agencies
  e.g. weeds

• Identification tools
• Many - mostly using LucID and DELTA, other
  applications Tropical Rainforest (Whiffin
  Christophel) Cycad Pages (Hill)
• Notable on CD Angiosperm families (World,
  Australian) Australian Rainforest Trees,
  Eucalyptus Acacia.
• On Web WA Flora Catalogue, Cycad Pages,
  WattleWeb, NSW Flora On-line

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Australian eFloras and other digital products
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Australian eFloras and other digital products
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Australian eFloras and other digital products
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Development of Australias Virtual Herbarium
(VAH)

• Aim of Prototype
• demonstrate functional capabilities of a
  distributed network on Internet
• demonstrate the collective capability of IT
  expertise in Australian herbaria
• highlight the custodianship and legitimate claim
  by Australian herbaria to be stakeholders
  in Australian plant biodiversity projects
• highlight the need to resource data capture and
  delivery
• emphasise the essential underlying partnership

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• The Australian Government herbariaPartners in
  the initial prototype

Common mulga Acacia aneura
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• The Australian Government herbariaPartners in
  the initial prototype

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• Australias Virtual Herbarium Stage 1 Web
  development

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Benefits of AVH over traditional herbarium
practices
Maximises limited resources

• Sharing technological advances
• Continue sharing IT developments
• Move to sharing data avoid duplication of effort
• Duplicate specimens
• Image banks
• Descriptions
• ID tools simple and complex
• Develop an on-line information system
  effectively electronic Flora of Australia

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Benefits of AVH over traditional herbarium
practices

• Regional herbaria distributed system or linkage
  to major State
• State censuses a thing of the past?
• Increased accessibility to collections by
  Community
• Publication - an On-line shared resource

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Australias Virtual Herbarium New opportunities

• Involving Community and other User groups
• Increased collecting - gaps in plant distribution
  data obvious
• Increased use of current plant systematic
  information
• New (and continued) partnerships
• Access to other data and information through
  partnerships of mutual benefit to custodians
• Capacity to link to International networks

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