CHSC Database

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How to Query the Database
General Notes
Databasing Progress Summary
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How to Query the Database -- 2 ways

Consortium of California Herbaria.
California vascular plants only. The specimen database of this organization, based at UC Berkeley, contains records for the California vascular plant specimens from most of the California herbaria that have been databasing their collections. Queries can be made on several data fields, including species, county, collector, and/or geographic locality. A truly elegant site.

Biological Sciences Herbarium.
All collections (vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens; California and outside of California). This portion of our web site is hosted by the herbarium at UC Davis. Queries can be made by genus or species name only. Such queries obtain data from our non-California collections as well as for our California collections.

General notes.

The Database.
This database has been searchable since 14 October 2001, with new data added regularly as databasing of the collection progresses. Of our more than 96,123 herbarium specimens 79,165 have been databased to date (29 March 2007). Click here for collection statistics and for a list of families and plant groups that have been completely databased. We are interested in your comments and suggestions; please send them to Lawrence Janeway.

The database used at CHSC was created in MS Access at the UC Davis Herbarium (DAV). DAV has made the database freely available to the herbarium community. The database has been somewhat modified for use here at CHSC, but the basic structure remains intact. Our thanks to the UC Davis Herbarium for hosting the database-querying portion of our website on their web server.

Nomenclature.
Nomenclature and family arrangements for vascular plants generally follows what is presented in The Jepson Manual (Hickman 1993). Some nomenclature has changed to match the upcoming second edition of The Jepson Manual, especially for some genera in Asteraceae and Cyperaceae. Family arrangements for bryophytes (mosses, liverworts, and hornworts) follows that presented for the Bryoflora of North America Project; however, species level nomenclature has not all been updated and may reflect only what appears on the specimen label. Nomenclature and current names for the lichens follows North American Lichen Checklist by Theodore Esslinger.

Determinations.
The herbarium cannot vouch for the identification of any specimens; use your own judgment and knowledge of particular collectors and determiners as your guide.

Annotations.
Queries will draw upon the most recent annotations on each specimen, although the full database does contain the name originally applied to a specimen and all subsequent annotations. Vascular plants not already determined or annotated with the "current name" (according to The Jepson Manual) have been anonymously annotated by the herbarium staff to the current name. Only California vascular plant collections are being systematically referenced this way.

Data Entry.
Label information has been copied as exactly as possible into the database. The only changes made during data entry are minor corrections such as obvious typos and spelling errors, especially in the plant names.

Georeferencing.
Volunteer Bill Carlson has been determining latitude and longitude for our specimens that don't already have this information on their original specimen labels. This information is then added to the database records. The database contains a field that shows which records have thus had latitude and longitude added and which contained this information on their original labels. All latitude and longitude coordinates looked up by Bill Carlson or as part of other herbarium activities are in NAD83. Projection (NAD27, NAD 83, or WGS84) for coordinates on original specimen labels is usually not known, but is recorded in the database when present. More information about how latitude and longitude have been determined will added here later. To date, Bill has determined latitude and longitude coordinates for more than 25,000 specimens!!

Thanks.
To Bill Carlson for his volunteer help with preparing the database template for use here at CSU Chico, for initial set up of the herbarium website, and for getting the database queryable on-line. To Tom Starbuck at the UC Davis herbarium for technical help with the database and for obtaining permission from UC Davis for the UC Davis Herbarium to host the database-search portion of our website on their web server. To the student (Herbarium Assistant) who is presently entering data as part of this project: Jane Hazen. To the volunteer who is presently entering data: Susan Bazell. To the students who have entered data over the years: Morgan LoRomer (who has entered more records than any other person), Cat Talbot, Erica Bromberg, Anita Joule, Marcella Shuey, Michelle Cederborg, Stephanie Lopez, Jeannie Trizzino, John Rowden, and Lani Heath. To the volunteers who have entered data: Barbara Castro, Bill Carlson, Susan Bazell. To Bill Carlson who is looking up latitude and longitude coordinates for specimens that don't have coordinates. To our database committee for making the database most useful, trouble-shooting a data entry protocol, and in general getting the project off the ground: Bill Carlson, Barbara Castro, Lawrence Janeway, with occasional technical help from Ann Willyard. To an early NSF grant to Kristina Schierenbeck, Herbarium Director, that funded three years of this databasing project, including coordination and data entry by the curator, Lawrence Janeway, and data entry by several of the students.

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Last updated 4/3/07
by Lawrence Janeway
e-mail

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