Herbar Digital

Herbar Digital is a research project at the Fachhochschule Hannover (FHH) from 2006 to 2011 for rationalising the virtualization of botanical document material and their usage by process optimization and automation.

Conservatively estimated, 500 million dried plants — so called herbar specimens — are stored in herbariums at botanic gardens across the world under scientifically controlled conditions.

The aim of the third-party-funds financed research project is to automate the process of virtualization of herbar specimens and their management to make them digitally accessible to botanists and biologists.

Automation is divided into three development focus points: The herbar specimens get scanned to RAW data with a scanner camera attached to a standard personal computer and stored on a server using SilverFast Ai software.

The post processed RAW files get converted in a suitable image format, controlled at a profiled graphic screen and stored back on the server.