The Herbarium is located at the Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan and holds specimens from across the Pacific region for critical biodiversity, ecological, and evolutionary research studies.
Over the past five years, scientists from the Botanic Gardens of Sydney have archived and digitised the entire collection, including more than 800 specimens collected by botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on Captain Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific in 1770.
The new platform is the most comprehensive searchable image archive in Australia, and the first and largest mass digitisation of a natural history collection undertaken in the southern hemisphere.
About 4000 images were taken daily to transform the plant specimens into a high-resolution image.
The digitisation process has already revealed new discoveries of Australia’s botanical science history, including specimens collected by celebrated Indigenous painter Albert Namatjira and illustrations by renowned botanical illustrator Margaret Flockton.
The collection of high-resolution images has been uploaded to Amazon Web Services (AWS), who are providing free storage as part of the AWS Open Data Sponsorship Program.
The program covers the cost of storage for publicly available datasets, supporting community access to the records for the first time.
People can visit the Botanic Gardens of Sydney Herbarium search portal and search for plants using scientific name, collection date, collector and other criteria.
The search result will reveal the images of the plants and collection data associated with the specimen.
