What is it about?

There are three types of data linked to biological collections 1) the data on the label, 2) the position of the material in the collection, 3) data from external sources, When undertaking digitization of the collection you will need to consider these types of data differently, and we believe the most important data to capture at the point of digitization is No.2 the position of the material, as this may not be available to be recovered at a later date. We provide an example of capturing this type of data from within a herbarium context, where the taxonomic placement of a herbarium specimen is only available from upon the doors of the herbarium cabinets. We also look a tools (such as OCR) for capturing the type 1) - labels data and linking in type 3) external source data.

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Why is it important?

It provides a framework of the prioritization for the collection of data from the digitization of biological collections.

Perspectives

This is a step along the "journey" that the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in digitization the 3 million sheet herbarium collection.

Mr Robert W.N. Cubey
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

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This page is a summary of: Data concepts and their relevance for data capture in large scale digitisation of biological collections, International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, March 2012, Edinburgh University Press,
DOI: 10.3366/ijhac.2012.0042.
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