East Texas field with Ranunculus.

Apiary - Streamlining the digitization of herbarium specimens

The University of North Texas’s Texas Center for Digital Knowledge (TxCDK) and the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT) will conduct fundamental research with the goal of identifying how human intelligence can be combined with machine processes for effective and efficient transformation of textual museum specimen label information into high-quality machine-processible parsed data. This two-year project will advance understanding of the workflow and processes best able to increase access to and use of digitized biological collection metadata within the stakeholder communities comprised of biologists, natural history museum collections managers, biodiversity standards groups, and the library and information science community.

Funded by Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant # 06-08-0079-08 — http://www.imls.gov
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute's mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas.

For more information, visit the Apiary project site at www.apiaryproject.org.