Computerisation of Southern African Herbaria
Computerisation
of herbaria in southern Africa has been a core activity within the SABONET
Project since 1997 and we have published regular updates on the progress
of this important output. Maps showing the geographical distribution of
specimens computerised by several southern African herbaria were included
in both the August 1998 and December 1999 editions, and bar graphs were
included in the August 1998, December 1999, and December 2000 editions of
SABONET News (Arnold & Willis 1998, Willis & Arnold 1999,
Siebert & Willis 2000).
The
importance of computerisation was emphasised during the Project’s Midterm
Review in 2001 (Timberlake & Paton 2001). The herbarium specimens computerised
by the participating herbaria of the region are of great importance to southern
Africa, as this is the first attempt ever to compile a comprehensive, organised
database of all known plant taxa housed within selected herbaria of the
sub-continent. As the SABONET Project is coming to a close, we will have
to look at improving our computerisation rate during the final months. Indeed,
Decision 2 of the Tripartite Review Recommendations of August 2000 and Recommendation
G of the Midterm Review of February 2001, requested that IT issues be given
priority and sped up and that the level of training be addressed where possible.
This activity has become a major priority for the 2001–2002 period.
We
define computerisation of a southern African herbarium as the process whereby
the information on the data labels of herbarium specimens is entered into
the PRECIS Specimen Database. A Data Entry Clerk is responsible for removing
specimens from the herbarium cabinets and typing the relevant information
on the specimen label into the database. The encoded information is then
stored and managed in computer databases throughout the region. However,
the computerisation process to capture, encode, or digitise herbarium specimen
information is obviously prone to problems as a consequence of human error.
The
following report is an evaluation of the status of data capturing in the
participating herbaria of southern Africa. It investigates some of the problems
that can occur, and that negatively affect the quality of the data or hamper
the computerisation process.
Computerisation Report
Considerable
progress has been made with the total number of specimens computerised since
the start of the Project. To date, the participating herbaria have computerised
a total of 375,000 specimens as part of SABONET. Up to May 2002, the best
progress was made by SRGH (National
Herbarium of Zimbabwe)—they had computerised 104,000 specimens. WIND (National Herbarium of Namibia) have
finished computerising all their specimens, approximately 75,000. NBG (Compton Herbarium, South Africa),
MAL (National Herbarium of Malawi), and NH (Natal Herbarium,
South Africa) have also made excellent progress and have computerised 55,000,
28,000, and 27,000 specimens respectively. The National Herbarium of South
Africa (PRE) started computerising their specimens
long before SABONET was initiated and currently has the largest database
of computerised specimens. They have computerised 65% of a total of ca 1,200,000 specimens. The National Herbarium
of Swaziland will probably become the second herbarium to complete the computerisation
of their collections, as they have already entered the information of approximately
6,800 of a total of 7,400 specimens. We believe that these statistics show
that the computerisation initiative is successfully developing into a major
taxonomical capacity-building programme.
Click
to view comparison charts for all specimens.
Poaceae Databases
A regional decision
was taken at the Fourth SABONET Steering Committee meeting held during September
1997 in Zomba, Malawi, to focus initially on computerising the grass specimens
(Poaceae) in the participating southern African herbaria. Although many
problems are hampering the computerisation process, approximately 160,000
grass specimens (94% of the total number) housed at participating SABONET
herbaria have so far been encoded. Of
the 16 participating herbaria, 11 have already computerised all the grass
specimens of collections made in their own countries; three have computerised
more than 90%. The remaining two herbaria have computerised 25% and 35%
respectively—the reason for the low percentage of computerised Poaceae specimens
by these two herbaria is that LUAI (Angola) prioritised another group
for computerisation and PSUB (Botswana) did not regard computerisation
as a priority.
As
the computerisation of the Poaceae is a policy decision and of regional
interest as self-acquired knowledge, the following proposal was made by
the Midterm Review and endorsed by the SABONET Steering Committee at the
10th meeting in Windhoek, Namibia (February 2001): countries should also
produce Poaceae checklists for their countries before the end of the Project.
As a result, three National Poaceae Checklists are being developed and published by Lesotho (Mr Khotso Kobisi), Namibia
(Ms Esmerialda Klaassen), and Zimbabwe (Mr Christopher Chapano).
Quality
Control
Computer
Systems
The
Way Forward
Conclusion
References
—by Trevor Arnold & Stefan Siebert
SABONET
News 7.2: 92
