Digital Herbarium Collections of the Central Siberian Botanical Garden SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia

Abstract

The first herbarium at the Central Siberian Botanical Garden (CSBG SB RAS) was organized in 1946. Now there are two herbarium collections in CSBG with their own acronyms and registrations in the Index Herbariorum (NSK and NS). Collection contains about 800,000 herbarium specimens of higher vascular plants, mosses, lichens and fungi sampled in Siberia, Russian Far East, Europe, Asia and America. Digitization of higher vascular plants at 600 dpi was initiated in 2014 by special scanner Herbscan starting with type specimens. Images and metadata of 889 type specimens are currently available on the Virtual Herbaria web site at the Vienna University, Austria and in JSTOR. In 2017 a new research group “USU-Herbarium” was organized in CSBG for digitization and management of herbarium collections. Our aim is to provide online access to CSBG SB RAS herbarium collections as a worldwide resource for biodiversity studies. We are digitizing NSK and NS high vascular plants collections by two scanners ObjectScan 1600 and Herbscan. Currently about 13,000 herbarium specimens were digitized at 600 dpi. Images and metadata are stored in CSBG Database generated by ScanWizard Botany and MiVapp Botany software (Microtek, Taiwan). The largest numbers of samples scanned are from Primulaceae (4984), Cystopteridaceae (891), Orchidaceae (750), Boraginaceae (664), Poaceae (632), Asteraceae (550), Athyriaceae (436), Fabaceae (418), Amaryllidaceae (381). The database is structured in a way that a user can access a high resolution image and following key information: specimen ID (= barcode), family name, scientific name, collector name and collection date, country or administrative region.