The on line herbarium: a reality in 2005

Herbarium RB on line

The move towards the digitization of the RB herbarium started in 2003, when the Botanical Garden botanical research and information technology staff initiated the design of a database, which they called JABOT, which would be capable of recording and re-distributing the large volume of information contained in the collection. The prerequisites, from the outset, were that the data should be made available to the interested public in an uncomplicated and dynamic form, and that it should be shared with other institutions, private or public, for use in the knowledge and conservation of our biota.

In 2004, development began on the modules of a system, based on the Web, which would become a series of programs to support consultation, maintenance and updating of the data to be filed in JABOT. With Petrobras as sponsor, an information technology laboratory was set up linking 16 computers to a central database server. A team of 32 professional keyboard operators and 4 supervisors was contracted and trained for the project. The process of digitizing the pressed and dehydrated plants commenced on August 29, 2005, and since then an average of 1,800 specimens have been digitized per day. The target is to conclude the identifying labels of all the collection’s 450,000 samples in two years.

Currently, the database can be consulted by logging on to www.jbrj.gov.br/jabot on the Internet or www.jbrj.gov.br/jabot/wap by mobile phone. The digitization continues, however, and new forms of consultation are being developed, data interchange projects with national and international scientific institutions are being formed, and new technology (such as geographic, image and mathematical model information systems) is being incorporated, making viewing and analysis ever more accurate, in support of the advancement of scientific knowledge of Brazilian biological diversity.