Abstract
Premise of the StudyGlobally, natural history collections are focused on digitizing specimens and information and making these data accessible. Usage information on National Herbarium of Victoria data made available through the Atlas of Living Australia and The Australasian Virtual Herbarium (AVH) is analyzed to understand how and by whom herbarium data are being used.MethodsSince 2010, AVH data usage information has been gathered from users and supplied to data custodians as a spreadsheet that includes number of download events, number of records downloaded, and user reasons for downloading data in predefined categories.ResultsSince 2010, in excess of 268,000 download events of 194 million records (excluding testing events) have been recorded for the National Herbarium of Victoria data set. This means, on average, every record has been downloaded 220 times in the past nine years. Data use grew continuously from 2010 to 2015 but decreased in 2016 due to fewer ecological projects.DiscussionData have primarily been used for ecological research, but there is an emerging trend for use in education including citizen science projects. Information about data use demonstrates relevance to funding agencies and helps inform the development of collections and prioritization of resources when digitizing material.
Highlights
PREMISE OF THE STUDY: Globally, natural history collections are focused on digitizing specimens and information and making these data accessible
Usage information on National Herbarium of Victoria data made available through the Atlas of Living Australia and The Australasian Virtual Herbarium (AVH) is analyzed to understand how and by whom herbarium data are being used
The origin of herbaria can be traced back to the Italian botanist Luca Ghini in the mid-1500s, who developed and promoted the practice of pressing plants into herbaria (Arber, 1938). These early herbaria were mounted in books and use was closely tied to herbals
Summary
The robustness of the search interface is tested through the external download function through a series of standard searches These protocols ensure that new data uploads have happened correctly and that data supplied by the data custodians are mapped to the correct fields in the AVH cache. General data use Overall queries increased from 2011 to 2013, declined in 2014 and 2015, and have increased again in 2016 and 2017 to more than 4500 per year (Fig. 1A) This contrasts with the number of records downloaded, which peaked in 2014 (Fig. 1B). The number of download events increased over the seven-y ear period, with a slight decline in 2014 and 2015 (Fig. 1A) The number of records downloaded peaked in 2015, declined in 2016 (but not as markedly as the queries), and is projected to recover in 2017 but not to 2015 levels (Fig. 2B)
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