Biodiversity Information Science and Standards : Conference Abstract
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Conference Abstract
DoeDat, the Crowdsourcing Platform of Meise Botanic Garden
expand article infoQuentin Groom‡, Sofie De Smedt‡, Nuno Veríssimo Pereira‡, Ann Bogaerts‡, Henry Engledow‡
‡ Botanic Garden Meise, Meise, Belgium
Corresponding author: Quentin Groom (quentin.groom@plantentuinmeise.be), Sofie De Smedt (sofie.desmedt@plantentuinmeise.be)
Received: 20 May 2018 | Published: 15 Jun 2018
© 2018 Quentin Groom, Sofie De Smedt, Nuno Veríssimo Pereira, Ann Bogaerts, Henry Engledow
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Groom Q, De Smedt S, Veríssimo Pereira N, Bogaerts A, Engledow H (2018) DoeDat, the Crowdsourcing Platform of Meise Botanic Garden. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 2: e26803. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.2.26803
Open Access

Abstract

Herbarium specimens hold a wealth of data about plants; where they come from, where they were collected and by whom. Once digitized, these data can be searched, mapped and compared. However, the information on specimens is often handwritten and even the best software systems cannot read it. This is where we get real value from citizen involvement. Digitizing these data is only possible with the aid of human intelligence.

DoeDat is a multilingual open-source platform for transcription, based upon the DigiVol program of the Australian Museum and Atlas of Living Australia. DoeDat is a product of our digitization project Digital Access to Cultural Heritage Collections (DOE!), funded by the Flemish Government. DoeDat is about creating data and also, ‘Doe Dat’ means ‘do that’ in Dutch.

DoeDat will help us digitize our collections, and will also give the public the chance to take an active part in the process. We aim to build a community of enthusiastic online volunteers who will help us liberate botanical data from specimen labels and documents. We launched the platform on Science Day and within two months, more than one hundred volunteers had transcribed more than 4,000 specimens.

Join in at www.DoeDat.be

Keywords

crowdsourcing, herbarium specimens, transcription, volunteer programs, citizen science

Presenting author

Quentin Groom

Presented at

SPNHC

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