The Global Plants Initiative (GPI) is an international collaboration aiming to digitize and make available plant type specimens, together with other botanical resources, for scholarly purposes. The GPI network of content providers currently includes more than 190 partners (museums and herbaria) representing over 60 countries.
Currently, GPI is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Botanische Staatssammlung München (M) participates in this initiative since 2004. Initially, type specimens of African vascular plants were processed, then under the name African Plants Initiative (API). Since 2007, types of plants from all continents are being digitized, since 2010 also type specimens of lichens and lichenicolous fungi. The name of the initiative changed over time from API to LAPI (Latin American Plants Initiative) and now GPI.
The Botanische Staatssammlung München also enabled the inclusion of African types of plants from several other German herbaria, i.e. of FR (Herbarium Senckenbergianum Frankfurt/Main), HOH (University of Hohenheim), MSB (LMU Munich), REG (University of Regensburg), STU (Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History), and TUB (University of Tübingen).
The output of the Glopal Plants Initiative is presented through JSTOR Plant Science, an online environment that includes not only botanical type specimens but also taxonomic data, scientific literature and relevant correspondence, and other related materials. The websites and services provide high resolution digital images of specimens and texts as well as precise digital measurement tools for morphological analyses and the option to tag selected content for personal use and for sharing with colleagues and collaborators. Searches are possible via hierarchical browsing or with text searches for metadata. Full access to the content and tools is currently available for institutions and their associated staff only.
In parallel, standard-resolution images with data of material from the Botanische Staatssammlung München (M) and from the herbarium of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (MSB) is accessible in GBIF via the SNSB Data Publisher. Those data are also searchable through portals using the BioCASE XML datasource service (e.g. the BioCASE Europe Portal and the EDIT Portal).
The aim of the Global Plants Initiative is to digitize approximately 2 million records of plant type specimens from around the world, with over 1,050,000 specimens having been digitized for the project to date, almost 16,000 archival objects, over 14,000 photographs of live plants, habitats and plant-based artefacts and more than 6,500 paintings. The Botanische Staatssammlung München will digitize ca. 30,000 vascular plants, 4,000 types of lichens and lichenicolous fungi and selected drawings in the course of the project. General Information on the collections in M and their online access is provided under Herbarium and linked web pages.
GlobalPlant Initiative team in Munich: S. S. Renner, A. Beck, H.-J. Esser, D. Triebel (coordination); K. Bensch, C. Bräuchler, B. Dickoré, P. Montes de Oca, F. Turini, T. Weibulat, S. Werner (scientific staff).
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