Dear Colleagues,
The Society of Herbarium Curators and iDigBio are pleased to announce an 8-week "Strategic Planning for Herbaria” online course.
Take this opportunity to introduce new purpose and excitement into your organization. Prepare to relate your herbarium’s compelling vision to stakeholders and discuss long-term goals and strategies with administrators.
Bauhin 2022 – Conference
15 & 16 September 2022, University of Basel, old town of Basel, Switzerland
400 Years of Botanical Collections – Implications for Present-Day Research
International Symposium in honour of Caspar Bauhin (1560-1624)
Caspar Bauhin, (1560-1624) was the first professor of Botany at the University of Basel, and one of the most prominent plant systematists of his time, a forerunner of Linnaeus. He also founded one of the first University Botanical Gardens and collected a herbarium of thousands of plants that survives to today. He published his pioneering Flora of Basel „Catalogus Plantarum circa Basileam sponte nascentium“ exactly 400 years ago – one of the first comprehensive local floras. This international Symposium will trace 400 years back from the origin of local floras and botanical collections to their significance for present-day research in Evolution, Systematics, and Global Change.
Learn More: https://herbarium.unibas.ch/en/bauhin2022/
Contributed by: Shelly Gaynor
Figure 1: With the help of Rhett Rautsaw, I was able to collect from 22 populations of Galax urceolata.
The NSF-supported Texas and Oklahoma Regional Consortium of Herbaria (TORCH) makes the information contained in natural history collections readily available to researchers, educators, land managers, and the general public. The TORCH project is digitizing and serving online the data from ca. 2 million herbarium specimens from the South-Central United States, unlocking the information from these collections with an array of scientific and societal benefits.
The project seeks a total of 20 interns for the summer of 2022 (June 6-August 12). The interns will participate in all aspects of specimen digitization, learn about herbarium collections management and the type of research that is conducted in herbaria, and carry out their own research project using herbarium specimens.
These internships will take place at five of the institutions that are collaborating on the project:
the Botanical Research Institute of Texas in Fort Worth;
the University of Oklahoma in Norman;
Oklahoma State University in Stillwater;
Texas A&M University in College Station; and
the University of Texas at Austin,
with four interns residing at each institution.
Working closely with a faculty/staff mentor at one of the five institutions, each intern will develop a scientific project utilizing digitized data, with 70% of their time devoted directly to digitization activities, including imaging specimens, transcribing specimen label data, and/or georeferencing. The remaining time will be spent on enrichment activities, including lectures and workshops about the technology and best practices of specimen digitization and curation, data collection and analysis, and poster preparation. Activities may also include field collection of plant specimens. The internship will culminate with the interns and their mentors attending the TORCH scientific meeting, in conjunction with the Texas Plant Conservation Conference, August 8-10 in Fort Worth, where the students will present the results of their projects in a poster session.
We particularly encourage applications from students whose participation will add to the diversity of researchers in botanical science, including students from underrepresented groups and first-generation college students.
For more information and for instructions on how to apply, please visit: https://www.torcherbaria.org/internship
The application deadline has been EXTENDED to Monday, February 14th, 2022 (from January 23rd).
Synopsis of Program:
Happy 2022 to all collections’ community colleagues. iDigBio is excited about the biodiversity community’s collective successes in 2021 and is looking forward to an adventurous upcoming year with many new activities on its workplan.
We invite you to submit an abstract for presentation at the DemoCamp session of the SPNHC 2022 Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland hosted by the National Museums of Scotland and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Since its debut at SPNHC 2009, DemoCamp has provided a venue for software developers, biodiversity informaticians, digitization managers, and collection managers to convene and share innovative approaches for the use of technology to enhance the management and use of natural history collections.
Computer demonstrations are welcomed in any technologies relevant to natural history scientists, collections managers, or biodiversity information managers. Technologies demonstrated may include, among others, collection management software, georeferencing applications, programs for analysis of data, computer vision applications, natural language processing, data visualization, etc. Presentations should feature the latest developments and innovations in currently available products or software as well as ongoing research and prototypes (as long as they are functional and can be demonstrated live). The live demonstration aspect of DemoCamp helps provide focus on technologies which are currently functional and available to the community and will raise awareness of new and improved technologies. The DemoCamp session is an opportunity for technology creators to interact with existing or potential technology adopters and to exchange ideas with users and other technologists. Presenters are encouraged to present content and concepts that are relevant to the SPNHC community. DemoCamp abstracts will appear in the conference proceedings.
The DemoCamp session is strictly for the live demonstration of software technology. PowerPoint, slides, or other “canned” presentation formats are not permitted. The DemoCamp format gives each presenter 15 minutes for a presentation plus 5 minutes for questions. Demonstrators must provide their own laptops with all necessary software installed. A projector and internet connection will be provided.
Abstracts must be submitted by January 28, 2022 and should be prepared and submitted according to the guidelines defined on the conference abstracts website at https://spnhc2022.com/abstract-submissions/, with a copy sent to the session organizer, Jason Best at jbest@brit.org. Questions may also be directed to Jason via email.
For further information and deadlines, please visit the SPNHC 2022 website at https://spnhc2022.com/
We look forward to receiving your submission and seeing you at SPNHC 2022!
Regards,
Jason Best (session organizer)
Caitlin Chapman (session co-organizer)
Erica Krimmel (session co-organizer)
First of all, you have two choices for accessing data from iDigBio. You can use the web-based specimen portal or you can use the iDigBio API. Whichever you choose we have some resources to help get you started, as well as some example introductory modules/lesson plans.
The NSF-supported Texas and Oklahoma Regional Consortium of Herbaria (TORCH) makes the information contained in natural history collections readily available to researchers, educators, land managers, and the general public. The TORCH project is digitizing and serving online the data from ca. 2 million herbarium specimens from the South-Central United States, unlocking the information from these collections with an array of scientific and societal benefits.
The project seeks a total of 20 interns for the summer of 2022 (June 6–August 12). The interns will participate in all aspects of specimen digitization, learn about herbarium collections management and the type of research that is conducted in herbaria, and carry out their own research project using herbarium specimens.
These internships will take place at five of the institutions that are collaborating on the project:
with four interns residing at each institution.
Working closely with a faculty/staff mentor at one of the five institutions, each intern will develop a scientific project utilizing digitized data, with 70% of their time devoted directly to digitization activities, including imaging specimens, transcribing specimen label data, and/or georeferencing. The remaining time will be spent on enrichment activities, including lectures and workshops about the technology and best practices of specimen digitization and curation, data collection and analysis, and poster preparation. Activities may also include field collection of plant specimens. The internship will culminate with the interns and their mentors attending the TORCH scientific meeting, in conjunction with the Texas Plant Conservation Conference, August 8–10 in Fort Worth, where the students will present the results of their projects in a poster session.
We particularly encourage applications from students whose participation will add to the diversity of researchers in botanical science, including students from underrepresented groups and first-generation college students.
For more information and for instructions on how to apply, please visit: https://www.torcherbaria.org/internship
The application deadline is Sunday, January 23rd, 2022.
