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General FAQS

What is a herbarium?

A herbarium is a scientific collection of preserved specimens that are carefully dried and called exsiccata, pressed, mounted on sheets, labeled, and stored for study. These scientific collection contain dried plants, seeds, woods, algae, fungi, lichens and mosses.

What is a herbarium specimen and why are we studying it?

A herbarium specimen is a sample that has been collected, dried, and preserved for scientific study. It is usually mounted on a sheet with a label that records the scientific name, collection location, date and other details. Herbarium specimens help botanists identify plants and study their ecology. Each specimen is a snapshot taken at a specific time and place, providing biodiversity information about the moment it was collected. These data are very useful for studying the changes that have occurred across the centuries and may even help to predict future patterns.

Why are we asking for your help? Why not do this ourselves?

One of our main goals is sharing our work with a wider audience, growing our community, and increasing engagement and interaction with our collections. Making our herbarium data accessible online would take longer time if we worked alone.
By inviting online volunteers like you to join us, we can combine our expertise with your contributions, greatly speeding up the process and allowing us to make more specimens accessible. Together, we can share all of our scientific data with researchers, educators and general public.

Task Focus FAQS

Help and Field Guide

In the field guide, you will find not only guidance to help with the tasks, but also examples of transcription. These examples illustrate how the label could be transcribed.

In the help text, you will find useful information about the transcription tasks, along with tips about the herbarium and where each piece of information is typically located on the herbarium label, and provide support for completing the tasks.

Transcription Issue

All botanical names are written in italics, which can sometimes make them difficult to read or transcribe accurately. In the help text, there are some advise available to try performing the tasks, while the field guide provides examples for reference. For any issue, the Talk function on Zooniverse is also available for discussion and assistance.

If you don’t have experience in transcribing labels from the late 1800s and early 1900s, you may encounter some issues with the handwriting. Some letters and capital letters could be very different from what we are used to. Always do your best and feel free to ask us about any trouble you encounter. This can improve the quality of the transcription and help us become aware of issues that we might have underestimated.

Our herbaria are mainly from Trentino-Alto Adige in Italy, but we also have specimens from all over the world. Most of our labels are written in Italian, but occasionally you may encounter labels in other languages (Latin, English, German, etc.). Please transcribe the labels exactly as written - do not translate. Match the label content to the transcription fields as accurately as possible.

Date

The date format is usually dd/mm/yyyy, but it may vary depending on the collector. To better understand the format and the date issues, please read the Help Task, which includes helpful tips specific to each herbarium. Usually, the month is expressed in Roman numerals. Below you can find a legend showing the Roman numerals for each month with also the italian and german name of the months.

Roman Numerals	Arabic Numerals	Months	Italian Months	German Months
I	1	January	Gennaio	Januar
II	2	February	Febbraio	Februar
III	3	March	Marzo	März
IV	4	April	Aprile	April
V	5	May	Maggio	Mai
VI	6	June	Giugno	Juni
VII	7	July	Luglio	Juli
VIII	8	August	Agosto	August
IX	9	September	Settembre	September
X	10	October	Ottobre	Oktober
XI	11	November	Novembre	November
XII	12	December	Dicembre	Dezember

Locality

We know that some of our locality names are difficult to transcribe because of handwriting or because they are written in Italian, Latin or German. We kindly ask you to attempt the transcription even if you are not 100% certain. Mistakes in this type of work are expected and already taken into account. If you had any trouble feel free to use the "Talk" tool by Zooniverse.
If the locality will result too unreadable, we have activated the "unclear" button. Use this tool like a last resort, try always your best.

How to interpretate Locality and Habitat

Many times, habitat notes appear immediately after the locality. In general, broad or non-specific place names refer to the Habitat, while specific locations refer to the Locality. We understand that this can be challenging for non-Italian volunteers. If you have any trouble feel free to use the "Talk" tool.

Scientific Name

Scientific names can be particularly difficult. The scientific name of the specimen is usually written at the top of the label. It is composed by two or more words, in Latin. The first word represents the Genus, that always begins with a capital letter; the second is called specific epithet and is written in lowercase (but sometimes it can have a capital initial letter too). After the specific epithet there are the author/s abbreviation/s. Sometimes the abbreviations are written with one inside parentheses and another outside. This means that the author inside the parentheses is the one who originally described the species, while the author following the parentheses is the one who later renamed or reclassified it. If the authors are more than one they are separated by comma and the last two are separated by "&". Sometimes, after the abbreviation, you may find “Typ.”: this indication means that the specimen has similar characteristics to the original specimen described by the author/s.

Example: Silene acaulis L. In this case, Silene represents the genus, acaulis represents the specific epithet, and L. is the standard abbreviation for Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), who named the species.

Some specimens may have a subspecies or a variety. Subspecies follow the specific epithet and are generally indicated by “ssp.” or “subsp.”, while varieties are indicated by “var.” or “v.”. In some cases, a specimen may have both a subspecies and a variety.

There are also lower infraspecific taxa, such as “f.” for forma and “subf.” for subforma, which indicate finer distinctions below the variety level.

Example: Silene acaulis L. v. longiscapa (Kern.) Hayek. Here, v. longiscapa represents the variety, (Kern.) Hayek are the authors, Kern. is the first author who described the variety and Hayek is the author who later renamed or reclassified it.

Any other question?

For further questions not covered on the FAQs or in the Help Task menu, you can use the Talk tool to ask for our assistance (available only if you are logged in Zooniverse recommended).
Our team will be happy to help you and it will be useful to improve our project.