1. Spotlight on the Global Plants Initiative
Digitization and the richness of type specimens at the Paris Herbarium -
Spotlight on the Global Plants Initiative
Pascale Chesselet & Jean-Noël Labat
Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle
Paris, France

2. Global Plants Initiative
The aim of GPI:
To build a comprehensive online research tool aggregating and linking scholarly botanical resources around the world

3. International collaboration 148 institutes in 52 countries

4. High-Resolution Type Specimens and Supporting Materials
24 bit colour, 600 dpi, Tiff
Original scans ± 200 Meg
Flashpix technology ± Meg – multiple versions of files within itself
FSI Viewer

5. High resolution
8 X what can be seen with the naked eye

6. Herbier National de Paris (P & PC)
11 million specimens
> types
Vascular Plants & Cryptogams
Paris, Kew, New York, Geneva ………

7. Type specimen digitization
Image scan
Bar code
Label data capture
Search for types
Verification 7

8. Joseph Pitton de Tournefort Voyage to the Middle East 1700-1702
Data
Dissections
Detail
measurements
Annotations
Original polynomial

9. Types of economically important plants
Siphonia brasiliensis Willd.
Triticum durum Desf.

10. Total: 978 108 specimens digitized of which 120 773 are types

11. Geographic coverage of type secimens
Vascular Plants
Cryptogams
America
Asia
Oceania
New Caledonia
North Africa
Tropical Africa
Madagascar
Europe

12. African Plants Initiative
objects
118 collections
114 contributors
31 countries
4 years
± species

13. API - Taxonomic backbone

14. that will be digitized, ingested and available on the website by 2012
JSTOR Plant Science
At the end of the project, the database should host 2.2 million type specimens
that will be digitized, ingested and available on the website by 2012

15. Features of GPI Linking related materials - literature on Jstor
Several languages: English, French, Portuguese & Spanish
Materials available: from archival documents to periodicals, books, reports, manuscripts, reference works, maps, specimens, illustrations….
Advanced online tools
…and more….

17. How people are using GPI
Research (GPI, JStor)
Discovery (microscope surrogate)
Measuring & recording measurements
Species identification
Plant uses
Sharing
Editing and refining the data

18. Outcome Comprehensive datasets Data repatriation Tools for taxonomists
Building capacity - taxonomists
Fundamental species data (types) available world-wide