| Abstract | Unlike most zoological specimens, botanical collections distinguish themselves by having duplicates, that is, multiple specimens generated from the same collecting event. These are either from the same plant or from a close population and are distributed among multiple herbaria. Over the last two decades, as digitization has become a significant part of doing business in systematics collections, it’s become clear that a great deal of “duplication” of effort has followed “duplication” of plant collections. Aggregators of specimen data, such as GBIF and iDigBio, recognize this phenomenon, as do individual herbaria. In 2005, a GBIF Workshop in Crete, led by the late Larry Speers, addressed this topic and Rusty Russell was tasked with investigating the issues surrounding “duplication”. More recently, a joint effort is underway at RBG-Kew, RBG-Edinburgh and the Smithsonian Institution to develop tools to harness the potential that plant duplicates offer toward making digitization a more efficient enterprise. Past and present activities to address this issue will be described. |
