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CBU Herbarium joins cross-Canada digitization initiative

In a quiet corner of C-wing sits the most valuable resource for anyone interested in the flora of Cape Breton.  About 5,000 plant specimens collected on Cape Breton Island, mostly through the initiative of Pixie Williams and Catherine Sneddon are carefully preserved, catalogued and sit row upon row in tall herbarium cabinets.  Until now, they have been freely available to students of Cape Breton natural history, but only to those able to visit in person.  By this time next year, anyone will be able to access the data and a high quality scan of the specimen.

The Canadian University Biodiversity Consortium, aided by a $7.9 million CFI grant is coordinating an electronic database of plants, fungi and insects in Canada.  In Atlantic Canada, especially for the Acadian Forest, Dr. Rodger Evans, Director of the E.C. Smith Herbarium, and Jennifer Richard, Vaughn Library, Acadia University are leading the effort to digitize botanical specimens.  So far the focus has been the Smith Herbarium.  In recognition of the importance of the CBU Herbarium to understand the flora of Cape Breton, they have chosen the CBU herbarium as the first to be digitized and be housed as a module on the E.C. Smith Herbarium website (http://herbarium.acadiau.ca/).

For the next two months, Amelia Barnes and Ashley Rendell, two biology undergraduates with an interest and expertise in plant taxonomy, will be scanning the 5,000 vascular plant specimens and updating the electronic database of ecological data associated with each specimen.  By this time next year all of this will be available to everyone with an interest in the flora of Cape Breton.

For more information:
Dr. D.B. McCorquodale,
Director, Centre for Natural History
Cape Breton University
Sydney, NS B1P 6L2