/ Activities

Digitisation

COI is well aware of the present-day demands for fast access to specimens and the information they contain; also of the Portuguese commitment to data repatriation. For that, a firm policy has been developed to database the specimens, and make this data available for free on the web.

Databasing

With a variety of funds, the Herbarium has been making some progress to database its most important collections and making them available in the online catalogue. The software used is SPECIFY, developed by the University of Kansas, USA.

Specimens databased are most types, the Willkomm Herbarium, c. one quarter of the Portuguese collection, all Leguminosae of Angola, John Gosseweiler Angolan specimens, and some Bryophytes, the total being more than 100.000 specimens.

Imaging

Image capture of herbarium specimens at COI uses either

  • HERBSCAN, with an inverted scanner using 600 dpi. File Format: TIFF image file. The resulting file sizes are of 200MB for sheets 11x17in.
  • Digital camera in light tent. Resolution: 300 dpi. File Format: JPEG image file. The resulting file sizes are c. 10MB.

In both cases the specimens are digitized with the (i) specimen barcode, (ii) measurement scale, (iii) Colour & Gray Scale Targets. The image file names are the barcode(s) of the specimen(s).