JSTOR Global Plants in Munich

Section Fungi , Section Vascular plants , Section Lichens

JSTOR Global Plants is an international collaboration aiming to digitize and make available plant type specimens, together with other botanical resources, for scholarly purposes. The network of content providers currently includes more than 300 partners (museums and herbaria) representing over 75 countries.

JSTOR Global Plants was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (Princeton, New York) until 2014, but new content is still being added. 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 fungi. The name of the initiative changed over time from API to LAPI (Latin American Plants Initiative), GPI (Global Plants Initiative) and now JSTOR Global Plants.

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).

JSTOR Global Plants includes not only information on botanical type specimens but also taxonomic data, scientific literature and relevant correspondence, and other related materials, even cultural heritage objects. 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. JSTOR Global Plants cooperates closely with the IAPT (International Association of Plant Taxonomy), and individual access might be available via IAPT in the future.

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) are 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 original aim of JSTOR Global Plants, to digitize approximately 2 million records of plant type specimens from around the world, has been surpassed now with ca. 2,900.000 digital objects included to date, mostly plant type specimens but also 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 digitized ca. 50,000 vascular plants (35,000 of these types), 7,000 types of lichens, 362 types of lichenicolous fungi and 806 types of inoperculate discomycetes in the course of the project. In addition, 3,311 selected drawings and water colours are delivered to JSTOR as Botanische Staatssammlung München Artwork). General Information on the collections in M and their online access is provided under Herbarium and linked web pages.

JSTOR Global Plants team in Munich:

Dr. Andreas Beck, Dr. Hans-Joachim Esser, Dr. Dagmar Triebel (coordination), Prof. Dr. Susanne S. Renner (until 2020).

For technical staff see SNSB IT-Center.

Former scientific staff (temporarily employed):Dr. Konstanze Bensch, Dr. Christian Bräuchler, Dr. Bernhard Dickoré, Dr. Norbert Holstein, Dr. Tobias Lehmann, Perla Montes de Oca, Dr. Peter Scholz, Dr. Florian Turini, Tanja Weibulat, Sebastian Werner.

Digitalisation stations: