Following the example of other herbaria, we have begun to digitize the materials housed in the main collection of the EMMA herbarium.
Until now, only some EMMA type sheets had been digitalized. Type sheets are the basis for descriptions of species, subspecies, varieties, etc. For this reason they are essential in taxonomy and they are considered the most valuable materials in herbaria.
The project “Adecuación del herbario SANT para digitalización y accesibilidad a datos de ejemplares de otros herbarios a través de GPI” allowed the photographic recording of type sheets from several AHIM herbaria, including the EMMA Herbarium in 2012. These images were stored in the JSTOR Global Plants repository and they are accessible at this link.
In 2021 we acquired some accessories to be able to photograph the plant samples in homogeneous and comparable conditions by ourselves: a light box and a colour checker. We still need to organize an accessible repository at our University. We would like to provide open access to this repository, following GBIF philosophy.
GBIF—the Global Biodiversity Information Facility—is an international network and data infrastructure funded by the world’s governments and aimed at providing anyone, anywhere, open access to data about all types of life on Earth.
https://www.gbif.org/what-is-gbif
As an example, this sheet of Centaurea citricolor Font Quer. It was collected by Gross on June 26th 1924 in Valdeflores, at an altitude of 800 m a.s.l., near Despeñaperros (Sierra Morena, Jaen, Spain).
It is a cotypus included in the Centuria I de Flora Iberica Selecta, 1934, Institutus Botanicus Barcinonensis.
Unfortunately, this sample was not yet cataloged as a type or possible type in 2012, when the EMMA herbarium sent its type sheets to the SANT herbarium to be scanned.
