Testing budget photosystems to reach an optimal solution for the herbarium digitization purposes

The current paper stresses the application of different budget photosystems for digitization of herbarium specimens. Twelve photosystems were compared by color accuracy reproduction of the images. It was found that the photosystem built on the basis of photocamera Canon EOS 800D and fixed lens Tokina AT-X M35 PRO DX AF 35 mm f/2.8 Macro and currently used for the digitization of the LWS herbarium collection demonstrated the best results among other tested photosystems. It also produced the images with the same or even better color accuracy as in images downloaded from P, PI, B, and W virtual herbaria. Nevertheless, its color accuracy measured as ΔE2000, in general, does not meet recent criteria ascertained for the herbarium digitization purposes and new FADGI’s requirements. This photosystem has been found to have improving potential and, hence, should be optimized. On the other hand, it was also shown that smartphone Samsung Galaxy S10 could produce images with the same or even better color accuracy compared to some images deposited at P, PI, W, and B virtual herbaria. Therefore, in conditions of extreme situations and hostilities, such smartphones with additional external illumination can serve for urgent digitization of natural history collections. Finally, we doubt the application of commonly used color targets for the digitization of herbariaum preserved specimens since the original living color of such specimens is usually lost during conservation and preservation. Instead, it would be more beneficial to apply advanced targets to evaluate the spatial accuracy of images since they can incorrectly represent the important morphological characters of preserved specimens

Data mobilization in the LWS herbarium: success and prospects

Digitization of hosted specimens is a crucial task for all herbaria worldwide and is one of the main streams for today. By digitizing their collections and publishing the datasets, the herbaria grant access to essential data to a wide research audience and, as a result, involve their collections in scientific work more actively. Digitization also allows virtual preservation of the collections, which is especially important in conditions of hostilities, when the entire collection can be destroyed or damaged in one moment. This paper describes two datasets recently published in GBIF in frames of the LWS herbarium digitization initiative. It also contains some considerations about further digitization priorities and plans in the LWS herbarium in the context of complicated war conditions and limited facilities.In total, 2,419 occurrence records from Ukraine mobilized from LWS herbarium were published. These datasets are planned to be dynamic with the addition of new records along with progress of digitization work at LWS. At least 6,000 more records are planned to be published through these datasets in 2024

Data mobilisation in the LWS Herbarium: success and prospects

Digitisation of hosted specimens is a crucial task for all herbaria worldwide and is one of the main streams for today. By digitising their collections and publishing the datasets, the herbaria grant access to essential data to a wide research audience and, as a result, involve their collections in scientific work more actively. Digitisation also allows virtual preservation of the collections, which is especially important in conditions of hostilities, when the entire collection can be destroyed or damaged in one moment. This paper describes two datasets recently published in GBIF in the framework of the LWS herbarium digitisation initiative. It also contains some considerations about further digitisation priorities and plans in the LWS Herbarium in the context of complicated war conditions and limited facilities.In total, 2,419 occurrence records from Ukraine mobilised from LWS Herbarium were published. These datasets are planned to be dynamic with the addition of new records along with progress of digitisation work at LWS. At least 6,000 more records are planned to be published through these datasets in 2024