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(Wolfville, NS) -
An innovative approach to maintaining and sharing Acadia
University’s collection of Nova Scotia’s Rare and Endangered Flora was
introduced today at the K.C. Irving Environmental Science Centre.
Herbariums are
collections of labeled, flattened and dried plants which can be
easily damaged and lost. For this reason, Acadia University has
launched a new digital approach that will prevent the loss of
valuable information with an electronic database of plant families,
genus species and records with accompanying scanned images of
specimens from the University’s own E.C. Smith Herbarium.
“The E.C. Smith
Herbarium itself contains over 200,000 specimens, including vascular
plants, bryophytes, and fungi. It is the largest herbarium in
Atlantic Canada and the first Canadian herbarium to have a digital
database with scanned images of the collection,” said Rodger Evans,
Director of the E.C. Smith Herbarium. “The digital herbarium doesn’t
replace the E.C. Smith collection, it’s just the next step that will
allow the information to be disseminated to local researchers,
university students, children, and naturalist societies all over the
world.”
The E.C. Smith Digital
Herbarium Project is organized to provide access via the World Wide
Web to a wealth of information pertaining to the flora of Nova
Scotia and the Acadian Forest as well as the extensive resources
catalogued and preserved in the E.C. Smith Herbarium. Its web site
at
http://luxor.acadiau.ca/library/Herbarium/ will provide access
to a database containing images and detailed information about the
specimens that have been collected and housed in the Herbarium since
1910.
Key players in this
collaborative effort between the Vaughan Memorial Library, Acadia’s
Biology Department and the E.C. Smith Herbarium are Rodger Evans,
Director of the Herbarium; Ruth Newell, Curator of the Herbarium;
Steve MacNeil, Library Systems Manager; Mary Lou Conrad, web
designer and Jennifer Richard, Academic Librarian for Biology.
The E.C. Smith Digital Herbarium Project was envisioned by Jennifer
Richard in 1999 during the announcement of the K.C. Irving
Environmental Science Centre. The motivation was to draw on Acadia’s
expertise in the use of technology and in environmental science.
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