THE PRESENT STATE OF THE DIGITALIZATION IN D.R.CONGO

CASE OF THE HERBARIUM OF LWIRO

Mwanga Mwanga Ithe1, Wabika Dumbo1, Franck Theeten2, Mergen Patricia2, Salvator Ntore3, Steven

Dessein3

1Centre de Recherche en Sciences Naturelles/Lwiro (CRSN-Lwiro) 2Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA)/Tervuren

3Botanic Garden Meise/Belgium (BGM)

Presentation of the Lwiro CenterThe CRSN/Lwiro is a research center located in South-

Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo which is active in several domains such as botany, zoology, geophysical sciences and humanities sciences.

The Research Center of Lwiro include five departments: o Biology, o Geophysics, o Nutrition, o Documentation and o Environment

Presentation of the Lwiro Center

Herbaria in D.R.CongoThe Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.Congo) has c.

15 herbaria throughout its territoryTheir size varies from 5000 to 150.000 specimens The total amount of herbarium specimens in D.R.Congo

is estimated between 300.000 and 400.000 specimens.Many herbaria suffered during the last decades because

of the political instability in the countryAbout 10% of the herbarium specimens are

consequently attacked by insects, but the situation varies from herbarium to herbarium

The herbarium of Lwiro is the third in D.R.Congo after Yangambi and Kinshasa (IUK); it is part of the Biology department of CRSN/Lwiro.

Lwiro herbarium has been created in 1953. Within the herbarium we have the following

laboratories:- Laboratory of Systematic and plant Taxonomy - Laboratory of plant ecology - Laboratory of Ethno-botany

In the Lwiro Herbarium we have 15,000 specimens

The herbarium of Lwiro

African Plants Initiative (API)In 2009 a project (API) was started in collaboration with

Botanic Garden Meise and funded by the Mellon Foundation in order to rehabilitate and digitize the type collections and the collections of the endemic plants in 10 herbaria of D.R.Congo

As a consequence, the digitalization of herbaria in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has already reached a good level

About 18,000 updated and scanned images are now posted and available on the website of JSTOR. Nevertheless, there are still numerous specimens to be scanned across the country.

API - LWIROThe herbarium of Lwiro has not escaped this

opportunity.LWIRO started the work in 2011 by the support of the

Botanic Garden Meise (BGM), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) and the Word Conservation Society (WCS).

Aim of digitalization in herbarium

To preserve and to protect specimens against risks of deterioration by manipulation

To archive collections and to put them available to researchers and the general public

To allow the public to reach these collections and to consult them for scientific purposes

Methodology

Selection of specimens to digitize according to the goals of the project

Preparation of the selected material for digitalization Scanning of specimens with herbscan at 600 dpi

Result and prospective Result and prospective Through this occasion more than

800 specimens of types and endemic plants of Central Africa had been digitized and are now available on the portal of JSTOR: http://plants.jstor.org/lwiro .

Scientific names of 1,000 specimens of plants have been updated.

http://biocase.africamuseum.be/biocase_rmca/querytool/main.cgi?dsa=cabin_crsn_lwiro

Result and prospective Result and prospective About 500 specimens were published with CABIN

project in collaboration with the Royal Museum for Central Africa - Tervuren in Belgium.

Approximately 3,000 samples were updated and digitized.

But the work continues, currently about 700 samples for upper and lower plants (Angiosperm and Bryophyte) of Irangi reserve, which will probably be published on the website of the CABIN in a second project.

Result and prospective Result and prospective

With these initiatives, our institution got an experience in digitization of natural history collections.

But we are still looking for more training and collaboration opportunities in order to improve this work.

Ultimately, we would like to get all the collections digitalized and published online to improve their accessibility and keep valuable scientific data in a safe format.

Acknowledgment Staff of Botanic Garden of Meise, for facilitating

digitizing work. Our thanks go to the Director and all person of Royal

Museum for Central Africa for checking, normalizing and publishing database into BioCASe.

We say also thanks for WCS and ARCOS for their assistance in this kind of work.

We can not forgot the Belgian cooperation for facilitating our participation to the TDWG 2014 conference.

We say Thanks