Applying Data Standards at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

What this was about

Robyn Drinkwater described how RBGE, a herbarium of about three million specimens with databasing since the mid-1970s, uses identifiers in Specify to standardise and link its data. She covered merging duplicate agents (up to four or five versions of a person from the legacy system) with Specify's agent merge tool and storing agent identifiers. She also covered IPNI, MycoBank and World Flora Online taxon identifiers, CETAF stable specimen URIs used since 2012, and forthcoming DiSSCo DOIs. The second half showed how identifiers link the herbarium with RBGE's three other collection systems (IrisBG, Koha, AtoM), with examples of watercolours linked to moss specimens and living plants linked to herbarium vouchers.

Why it matters. The talk shows why identifiers need to be structured and resolvable, not just stored. It also shows the practical steps (agent disambiguation, field restructuring, cross-system links) that an institution needs to publish linked, citable data.

In the room

• RBGE has about three million specimens covering all traditionally 'plant' groups including diatoms, algae and oomycetes; about 1.5 million database records have passed through at least four database systems.
• The legacy system had no unified agents table, which left four or five versions of some people. The Specify agent merging tool is helping to disambiguate them.
• Specify's dedicated agent identifier field allows several identifiers per agent. Link-outs to ORCID and Wikidata are planned to help staff.
• Taxon identifiers: IPNI IDs for vascular plants and MycoBank IDs for fungi, with World Flora Online IDs being tested. Both have been stored in the LSID field, and that mixed content prevents link-outs, so restructuring is needed.
• CETAF stable identifiers have been used since 2012. They make specimens citable, and staff can link from the barcode field to images in the herbarium catalogue without importing images into Specify.
• RBGE runs four systems: Specify (herbarium), IrisBG (living collection), Koha (library and artworks) and AtoM (archives). Identifiers are used to link, e.g., Greville moss watercolours in Koha to specimens, and living accessions to herbarium vouchers.
• Next steps: GenBank/BOLD identifiers for DNA extractions, links to sequencing data, getting identifiers into the Darwin Core export, and a possible Scottish data lake.

Notable moments