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Herbarium Management System

How to obtain a copy of the Pacific Forestry Centre Herbarium Management System.

The PFC Herbarium Management System, complete with a detailed illustrated user manual, is available in CD format and can be obtained by emailing the curator of DAVFP (bcallan@pfc.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca).

Two versions are available:

• Curators' version: all fields are activated.

• Collector's version: certain fields are restricted (i.e. collectors are prevented from adding herbarium accession numbers).

Features of the PFC Herbarium Management System:

The Herbarium Management System streamlines herbarium data entry and curation procedures, so that voucher specimen data can be entered via computer in the field, offices, or labs far removed from the herbarium. The resulting databases can be sent by disc or email to the herbarium along with specimens, thus avoiding time-consuming data re-formatting. The databases can then used to directly generate and print specimen labels, print accession information for filing, and update databases. The new software benefits biodiversity researchers and forest pathologists by speeding up the process by which specimens and their associated data are made available for public use.

The system was initially designed for use in Canadian Forest Service herbaria, but is freely available for adaptation by other herbarium curators. A CD version is also available free of charge. This system runs on Windows 2000. It has not been tested on Windows 98 or Windows XP.

Acknowledgments:

The development of this system was funded by a grant from the Forest Investment Innovation (Number R02-31), and by the Canadian Forest Service, Pacific Forestry Centre. The system concept was developed and tested by B. Callan, A. Thomson, and J. Dennis, and programming was done by A. Thomson and N. Sim.