Specimen Digitization

For decades, WILLI has cataloged specimen label data, and in 2018, began photographing specimens to provide digital, online access with latitude and longitude location data. This digitization initiative is supported by the Grady L. and Barbara D. Webster Memorial Fund—given by Susan Webster, Ph.D., William & Mary’s Jane W. Mahoney Professor of Art and Art History—as well as by an NSF-PEN grant in collaboration with Old Dominion University and the University of Mary Washington.

WILLI actively participates in the Southeast Regional Network of Expertise and Collections (SERNEC) data portal, which aims to create a comprehensive online network of plant data. This NSF-supported research coordination network is part of a global push to make biological information easily accessible to students, teachers, and researchers. Herbaria across the Southeast house several million plant specimens, providing valuable data on plant distributions, migrations, abundance, and ecological associations across both historical and current contexts. These collections underpin research in conservation biology, environmental science, systematics, biogeography, ecology, and plant pathology.

WILLI and other SERNEC-affiliated herbaria coordinate ongoing digitization efforts to produce a single, searchable, web-based database. The SERNEC project is funded by a National Science Foundation grant to Appalachian State University, in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII), its Southern Appalachian Information Node, and the information technology office at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville.