Wikipedia talk:GLAM/Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria

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List of Australian Herbaria[edit]

Hi RBGV GLAM team! I'm preparing a list of Australian Herbaria for Wikipedia. I've only listed active herbaria, mainly because including the defunct ones is a lot of extra work and has limited value. You can see the work in progress in my sandbox. I've also added a smaller table of the largest herbaria in Australia, ordered by collection size—this seems like a sensible addition given the commonly spouted misinformation on this topic.

If you have any thoughts about what information you'd like to see included, please reply to this message.

By the way, to reply to a message here on a talk page, it is customary to use a colon ( : ) to create an indent. One colon for the first reply, two colons for the second, and so on, to increase indents. Give it a try! And always sign off by typing four tildes (~~~~) to sign off with your details automatically added, like so: Drosera-RBGV (talk) 08:31, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Drosera-RBGV. This is a great idea. Given that we work so closely with the New Zealand herbarium community, I think it would good to make the list Australasian, or create and link to a NZ herbaria page; both can reference the Australasian Virtual Herbarium, too. RunningPostman-RBGV (talk) 01:53, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi RunningPostman-RBGV, a great idea in turn, and certainly a sensible/straightforward one to implement—I lean towards the shared Australasian page given the shared resources. Thank you for this suggestion! Drosera-RBGV (talk) 04:47, 21 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Bionomia[edit]

I note you wish to make the collecting activities of people more visible. You are probably aware of Bionomia, which is a tool for adding identified people to specimens instead of the simple name strings of collectors. I am hoping you might encourage active collectors/botanists/taxonomists to claim their specimens (both collected and identified) as it is almost impossible for outsiders to do this nowadays when collector/botanists/taxonomists may be based in Australia but identify specimens in many other collections. It was easy to identify specimens collected by Mary Ann McHard, but I gave up on Karen Louise Wilson (It was too often unclear whether it was she or another K.L.Wilson). Kevin Thiele has claimed (possibly the bulk of) his specimens in Bionomia and made his profile public. (And as you can see both wikidpedia pages refer to the collections made by McHard and Thiele). I am also hoping at some point the photographs of specimens will find its way into the public domain with CC-0, or CC-BY licences which are compatible with wikimedia policies of everything being available for free reuse whether commercial or non-commercial. There are far too many plant articles without an image, and a verified image from a herbarium would be wonderful. For an example from the animal world, see Hylaeus relegatus where a type specimen from AK has been used to illustrate the male bee. MargaretRDonald (talk)

And found & downloaded via Bionomia: the specimen image for Acacia hylonoma. (And if there is any way in which I can help please let me know.) MargaretRDonald (talk) 21:28, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]