Internship at KwaZulu-Natal Herbarium
One
of the primary objectives of SABONET is the production of a strong core
of professional botanists and plant diversity specialists in the ten countries
of southern Africa. This program has enabled staff based at various institutions
to interact through programmes such as grass identification courses, herbarium
management courses, database management courses, and through internships.
This type of interaction has certainly encouraged many networking opportunities
and has enabled staff to share their skills and expertise.
I
have recently had the pleasure of visiting the beautiful city of Durban.
The main objective of my visit was to offer guidance and training to the
new leader of the KwaZulu-Natal Herbarium computerisation team, Hassina Aboobaker.
This was made possible through a herbarium internship offered by SABONET.
The
computerisation of the herbarium specimens for the ten southern African
countries has been another of the major objectives of SABONET, and the PRECIS
database has been the tool used to achieve this objective. One of the advantages
of PRECIS is that it was designed to be user-friendly when inputting information.
But outputting the data from the database requires some skill. We addressed
issues such as constructing queries and how to draw up reports from the
outputs in Microsoft Access.
Initial
discussions were focussed on the set-up of the PRECIS database and dealt
with issues such as sharing and mapping folders. After we had worked through
most of the features of the database, we started doing some troubleshooting.
We looked at the different types of database access problems that could
occur, with regard to the server and the different workstations, ranging
from networking problems between machines to problems that could appear
in the database files itself (such as corruption of the front end or the
database files); we addressed possible remediation. Our aim was to bring
Hassina up to speed sooner, so that she could manage the database with increased
accuracy and consistency. In collaboration with the SABONET team, we looked
at managing a small database team.
Going
to the KwaZulu-Natal Herbarium also gave me a chance to appreciate the city I was
in. Being primarily familiar with the low shrubby fynbos vegetation of the
Western Cape, I was immediately struck by the contrast in vegetation types.
A walk in the Durban Botanic Gardens just below the KwaZulu-Natal Herbarium revealed
lush subtropical vegetation, with huge (by Cape standards at least) trees
dominating. Another feature of special interest was the large and colourful
displays of flowers and fruits produced by some of these trees. Adding to
this already lovely display of form and colour were the heavy fragrances
that pervaded the air.
In
one of the photographs Hassina is standing in front of one of the famous
attractions to the Durban Botanic Gardens, namely Wood’s Cycad (Encephalartos
woodii). This “tree” is one of the original cycads discovered in 1895
at the edge of the Ngoye Forest in Zululand by John Medley Wood, then Curator
of the Botanic Gardens. The reason for this cycad’s acclaim is that it was
one of a group of cycads that are all male, and no female plants have ever
been found.
—by
Fatima Parker
SABONET News 7.3: 246
