This project will digitize and publish label information from at least 8,000 moss specimens in the herbarium (SYKO) moss collection of the Institute of Biology of the Komi Scientific Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Efforts will focus on specimens from widely distributed genera (Sphagnum, Dicranum, Polytrichum, Pleurozium, Pohlia, Hylocomium, Aulacomnium) from northeastern European Russia. Information from labels will be captured, cleaned and prepared in Darwin Core format, and each occurrence will include geographic coordinates with a precision of at least 3 km. The digital image of original label will also be included with each record.
The project will document the process of mobilizing data from herbarium labels in multiple forms:
- an article in the Russian open access peer-reviewed journal
- a webinar on the institution's YouTube channel, and
- a report at one Russian scientific conference
The YouTube webinar on digitization of herbarium label data took place on 22 May 2019 and can be accessed here (in Russian).
At the completion of this project, the team will continue to use the equipment, software and experience to digitize the remaining mosses in the collection of SYKO herbarium, numbering more than 56,000 storage units.
Project Progress
More than 20,000 label images has been uploaded to a database where more than 14,000 of them were digitized due to the projects developed entry system that improves the efficiency of monotonous manual labour significantly. It has resulted in 14,871 registred moss occurrences through GBIF.org.
The source code of web-based software created during the project was published in the open scientific repository Zenodo.
The projects results were presented in a regional scientific conference "Symbiosis 2019" in Perm City, May 13 2019. The results has also been presented in Russian in a YouTube webinar (see link above).
The digitization of the moss collection and its publication through GBIF will be continued. If possible, all moss collections (57,000 records) may be digitized in 2-3 years (species names, date of collection, collector and determinator, decimal latitude and longitude).
The software develop during the project will be maintained and a new version will be published under GPL-like license. A translation of user interface into English will allow to expand the potential user audience.
The preprint "Methods of labour productivity increase for the digitization of label data of biological collections. Case of bryophytes collection of SYKO herbarium." will be sent in the open access peer-reviewed journal, ResearchGate.
