The Plant Resources Center (TEX) TORCH Collection

The Billie L. Turner Plant Resources Center’s (PRC) two herbaria are rich in specimens collected in the states of Oklahoma and Texas. These are being mobilized for inclusion in the NSF-funded project to digitize similar holdings from a large set of herbaria under the auspices of the Texas Oklahoma Regional Consortium of Herbaria (TORCH). In addition to specimens accessioned at the LL and TEX herbaria, the PRC is helping about a dozen smaller herbaria in Texas to mobilize their collections, some of which are being transported to UT and digitized in our facility. Digitization consists mainly of transcription of label data into our institutional Specify database system and creation of high-resolution images (JPG and DNG formats) that are linked to the text records in the database. Under the terms of the grant, data and image links from all herbaria are also being shared with various aggregators (a TORCH node at SEINet, as well as iDigBio and GBIF), and also are being uploaded to our institutional Lundell Portal (which uses Symbiota as its platform). Each of these connections with other websites on different software platforms requires a separate endpoint within an IPT server established for this purpose. The project eventually will extend beyond the end of the four-year grant and is intended to be maintained more or less permanently for the foreseeable future.