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Large stores of primary biodiversity data lie
relatively inaccessible in museum collections around the world.
One such collection is the University Herbarium at
Cambridge, which contains about 1.1 million
specimen sheets, and has a history spanning 300 years. Our
objective is to digitize some of the most important elements of this
unique collection and make the data available to a world-wide
audience via the web. This will enhance access to the
Herbarium as a learning resource for all and more specifically as a
basis for scholarship. The initial plan, spanning a five-year
period, aims to place about 50,000 prioritised herbarium sheets on
the Web. This includes many of the plant specimens collected
by Darwin
while on the Beagle.
The project will use standard data formats
developed within the biodiversity informatics community and make the
data available through a web service interface, thereby assuring the
data is accessible to the biodiversity research community. It
will also develop a coherent, logical and imaginative web portal for
use by the educational community and the general public.
Research Team
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