Historical collections in the Herbarium of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (CWU)

Study Extent

The dataset contains the records of the specimens collected from Europe in the Middle of the 19th century. Most specimens were gathered from the territory of modern Germany, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, and so on.

Sampling

We extracted the information from herbarium labels. Most records have modified names of taxa in case they have corresponding names in the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy or other nomenclature checklists available in the GBIF (e.g. Lejeunia spp. that is mentioned in the labels we fixed into Lejeunea spp.). Nevertheless, some nomenclature names were given according to the original names given on labels. The dataset contains the original descriptions (in German, Latin, French etc.) of the locality and the modified descriptions in English. We determined the geographical coordinates of each record based on the locality description. We used open sources (Google Maps, Google Earth, OpenStreet Map, the images of old maps etc.) to find the approximate locality where the specimens were collected. However, some labels have no enough information to find even an approximate locality so these records contain information about the country of the gatherings only.

Quality Control

Data quality control was provided using some tools that fix different types of mistakes. We fix the mechanical mistakes in OpenRefine and taxonomical mistakes in integrated to the GBIF Species matching tool.

Method steps

1. 1. Creating the spreadsheet in GoogleSheets. It is a useful method to make the row database in different places, on different devices, at any time. 2. To determine what kind of fields and how to give names to them correctly, we used information from the GBIF's webpage 'Data quality requirements: Occurrence datasets' (https://www.gbif.org/uk/data-quality-requirements-occurrences) and Darwin Core Quick Reference Guide (https://dwc.tdwg.org/terms/#resourcerelationship). 3. Based on information from herbarium labels, we filled the fields for each herbarium specimen. 4. Each specimen was scanned and images were downloaded to cloud storage. 5. The links to images must be added to the field with a corresponding record. 6. Download the spreadsheet with the database in .csv format. 7. Upload the spreadsheet (.csv file) to OpenRefine for data cleaning. 8. Data cleaning includes some steps. E.g. delete excessive whitespaces at the beginning and the end of a word and between words. Conjunctive similar words into one correct value. Faceting the dates and coordinates. 9. Checking the correspondence of the nomenclature names with the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy (https://www.gbif.org/tools/species-lookup) and fixing the mistakes in the taxonomy.

N/A

1. Targioniaceae
   rank: family
2. Scapaniaceae
   rank: family
3. Lepidoziaceae
   rank: family
4. Aytoniaceae
   rank: family
5. Marchantiophyta
   rank: phylum
6. Blepharostomataceae
   rank: family
7. Spaerocarpales
   rank: order
8. Plagiochilaceae
   rank: family
9. Conocephalaceae
   rank: family
10. Fossombroniales
    rank: order
11. Ptilidiales
    rank: order
12. Fossombroniaceae
    rank: family
13. Blasiales
    rank: order
14. Gymnomitriaceae
    rank: family
15. Sphaerocarpales
    rank: order
16. Cephaloziaceae
    rank: family
17. Metzgeriales
    rank: order
18. Marchantiales
    rank: order
19. Ricciaceae
    rank: family
20. Metzgeriaceae
    rank: family
21. Pelliales
    rank: order
22. Sphaerocarpaceae
    rank: family
23. Plantae
    rank: kingdom
24. Riellaceae
    rank: family
25. Ptilidiaceae
    rank: family
26. Blasiaceae
    rank: family
27. Jungermanniales
    rank: order
28. Lophoziaceae
    rank: family
29. Myliaceae
    rank: family
30. Trichocoleaceae
    rank: family
31. Jungermanniopsida
    rank: class
32. Marchantiaceae
    rank: family
33. Anastrophyllaceae
    rank: family
34. Porellales
    rank: order
35. Radulaceae
    rank: family
36. Herbertaceae
    rank: family
37. Lophocoleaceae
    rank: family
38. Pelliaceae
    rank: family
39. Marchantiopsida
    rank: class

The geography of the specimens covers mainly Europe but some occurrences were made in Northern Africa, and Central and Southern Asia.