Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Ten years ago we started scanning the Moscow University Herbarium collections (Seregin, 2016).Since 2016, we have been publishing them online on the Moscow Digital Herbarium website (https://plant.depo.msu.ru/).Later, we launched a GBIF-mediated dataset to promote large-scale access to the collections (https://doi.org/ 10.15468/cpnhcc).As of July 2025, physical collections of the Moscow University Herbarium include 1,137,501 specimens making it the second-largest herbarium in Russia after Komarov Institute in St. Petersburg and the 60th-largest herbarium in the world (Thiers, 2025).Specimen imaging in the MW Herbarium was completed at the end of 2018.All scans were published online with key metadata (i.e., "filed as" name, currently accepted name, one of 60 geographic area codes, country of origin, collection date, and primary collector).However, it was just the beginning of our long-term goal to digitize complete label data and georeference the collection, which was our most challenging task (Seregin, 2018).The MW Herbarium dataset is part of the Moscow Digital Herbarium online-consortium.This website is used by eleven Russian herbaria as a freely available product maintained by the Moscow State University.Besides MW (1,085,763 digitized specimens / 811,338 georeferences), these include MHA (183,479 / 131,959), IRKU (42,297 / 35,729), KUZ (20,136 / 20,129), TUL (10,098 / 10,089), TULGU (5054 / 5047), KULPOL (3657 / 3657), MAG (2604 / 2541), TKM (2967 / 2930), SMR (1796 / 638), KRSU (1268 / 31).Twenty herbaria confirmed their intention to join the consortium as new members in the near future.
Source: Taxon
DOI: 10.1002/tax.70067
Author: Alexey P. Seregin
Institution: Lomonosov Moscow State University
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,630
Funder: Russian Science Foundation
Award: G3068224196
OpenAlex ID: W4415682255