The AnArchive Project

The project An Archive for Botanical Data uses open-source software and is designed for institutions and individuals (both professionals and amateurs) to archive, retrieve and publish botanical data on the web or on a local network. At this stage it is a collaborative project between the herbaria of the Universities of Perugia, Camerino and Siena.

The Project includes several inter-dependent sections and supports applications that focus on:

• Taxonomy: A taxonomic master list can be managed; powerful tools are provided to handle complex taxonomic nomenclature, including synonymy (also pro parte cases), hybrids, etc. Unicode characters allow for use of non-standard diacritic signs (caron, ogonek, etc.) in authors names. The master list is printable.
• Herbarium management: The system facilitates daily management of a herbarium including bar coding of specimens, loans, online search and the like, following the procedures described by The Herbarium Handbook published by the Herbarium of the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens (Bridson D. and Forman L., Eds., 1998, 3rd edition).
• Flora: Data on the distribution of floristic records linked to herbaria and/or to published sources can be managed and distribution maps produced in any of the pre-defined mapping schemes.
• Vegetation: Phytosociological relevés and accompanying topographical, ecologic and structural data can be stored and managed by the system. The results of queries are returned in html or text-file format with tab-delimited fields that can be exported for further use in statistical or other data-exploration analyses and for printing.

The system is based on open-source software (Tomcat, Servelet container, PostgreSQL) and standard XML technology. It can be installed on any current UNIX, PC or Mac platform. Software such as Linnaeus (serving the management of taxonomic lists) and Archiver (archiving data from registered users into personal or shared data bases) can be used as well. Both applications are written in Java2 and run on various platforms (Linux, Mac OSX, Windows), Access is free for public data and any browser ( Mozilla, Netscape, Safari, Explorer...) can be used.

An Archive for Botanical Data is a collaborative Project. Colleagues interested in the Project are encouraged to use the software, and are invited to collaborate in testing the system, developing software and providing comments.