LAPI digitizes more than a million type specimens
December 14, 2009
STRI and the Jardín Botánico de Medellín hosted more than 120 specialists from 82 institutions at the third annual meeting of the Plant Initiative from December 1-3 in Medellin, Colombia
STRI and the Jardín Botánico de Medellín hosted more than 120 specialists from 82 institutions at the third annual meeting of the Plant Initiative from December 1-3 in Medellin, Colombia. The Plant Initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, makes high- resolution scans of plant type specimens from participating herbaria available online.
This global initiative results from the union of the African Plants Initiative with the Latin American Plants Initiative and currently includes 151 institutions from 56 countries. More than 1,250,000 images and data files are already online. The final digital library, administered by JSTOR, a USbased digital information storage service, will include over 2 million type specimens.
STRI, a major partner in this initiative, links regional herbaria and supports their grant-writing efforts. In collaboration with the New York Botanical Garden, the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, the Smithsonian distributes equipment to participating institutions in the US and Latin America. Twenty herbaria in Latin America have joined this project since the Institute assumed its role as regional coordinator of the Latin American Plant Initiative.
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