Small Collections Grant

The Papua New Guinea National Herbarium (LAE) is managed by the PNG Forest Research Institute (PNGRFI) under the PNG Forest Authority (PNGFA). Its function is to explore and document the country’s forests resources for scientific research, conservation, environmental, social and economic aspects. The LAE herbarium contains over 300 000 plant specimens of which 90 000 has already been databased and the information is available on the PNG Plant Database website (web//:pngplants.org). While data entry into PNG Plant Database continues, the herbarium is now in the process of pre-digitization curation of its collections. The pre-digitization curation process requires data mobilization in which herbarium data will be extracted from PNG Plant Database and will undergo some quality checks. The project will specifically define and determine error types, search and identify error instances, correct the errors, document error instances and error types, modify data entry procedures to reduce future errors and will ensure a maximum quality possible when digitizing of Taxonomic, Geographical, Collection and collector and Descriptive data. It is anticipated that after the pre-digitization process, the biodiversity data will be shared and be made available to be accessed online through published GBIF platform using Darwin Core. The project will support at least one herbarium staff and a recent undergraduate student to perform data clean-up process and prepare data for online publishing.