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Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria
RBGV is a leading botanic gardens and a centre of excellence for scientific research, horticulture and education. Located within the Gardens is the National Herbarium of Victoria, which is home to the State Botanical Collection[1] (SBC), representing Australia's largest herbarium collection.[2] This collection, comprised of over 1.5 million dried vascular plant, cryptogam and fungi specimens, also incorporates an archive and library that house a valuable collection of botanical art and literature.
Data regarding significant numbers of species held within the the SBC are documented on Wikipedia, as is data concerning many historical and living figures of note who have made it their life's work to document the world's flora. Ongoing, large-scale digitisation projects at RBGV are allowing our staff to release the tremendous wealth of botanical and historical knowledge held within the SBC, to make it accessible to the public via the internet under Creative Commons licensing. It is the aim of this RBGV working group to ensure that this process takes place in a consistent and stringent manner, ensuring access to the highest quality of reliable data.
RBGV staff contributing to Wikipedia are tasked with making reliable, fully referenced data derived from the State Botanical Collection available in a transparent manner.
- RBGV staff are expected to identify their affiliation on their user pages.
- Information added to Wikipedia must be verifiable, typically drawing on data held within the SBC either directly or via one of the aggregating portals that make this data available, e.g. the Australasian Virtual Herbarium.
- RBGV staff contributing to Wikipedia are obliged to do so using individual accounts rather than organisational ones, and must remember that they are writing for a public information resource and not presenting the views or interests of RBGV.
- RBGV staff are asked to consider the potential for conflict of interest and to act transparently and in such a manner as to avoid it. For example, if substantive changes relating to RBGV related articles on Wikipedia cannot be made without proper citations, RBGV staff are expected not to proceed with the changes.
- MEL botanical collectors – Many Wikipedia pages for individuals don't list their botanical collecting activity nor where their collections are held. The curation team at RBGV are adding descriptions of collecting activity and herbarium holdings for collectors respresented in the National Herbarium of Victoria (MEL) collection.
- Taxon pages – RBGV staff know lots about plants, algae and fungi. The RBGV curation team are editing existing pages, and starting new ones, within their areas of expertise.
There are no prescriptive guidelines for contributions by RBGV staff (and nor should there be), but the following suggestions might help you get started and ensure that contributions are appropriately referenced. In order to ensure quality and consistency of RBGV contributions, sandbox drafts of new articles (or large changes to existing pages) should be reviewed by another member of the project team before going live.
MEL botanical collectors[edit]- If a collector's page is lengthy and organised into different sections, add a separate heading for 'Botanical collecting' if it makes sense to do so. If there's little information on the page and no or few subheadings, then include the information as a separate paragraph after the main biographical details (see Charles Fawcett (politician) for an example of this approach).
- The scientist infobox is a useful way to summarise information about professional botanists. Some pages already have them, in which case you can edit the source to add any extra details we might have. Otherwise, copy and paste the template to add an infobox and fill in the available details.
The available content will vary from person to person – and especially between professional botanists and non-prodessional collectors – but the following should be included, if relevant:
- Additional biographical details from reliable sources
- When and where they collected (and for whom, if relevant) – the AVH can be cited for this information
- Associations with other major collectors, such as co-collectors – the AVH can be cited for this information
- Details of where their specimens are held – cite the AVH and/or HUH Index of Botanists. If the collector's specimens are held at other herbaria as well as MEL, talk about the institution with the greatest number of holdings first.
- Their author abbreviation, if relevant, including a link to the entry in IPNI – note that botanical author abbreviation is a parameter in the scientist infobox
- Their area of study
- Taxa they have described – external links to APNI for individual taxa are good here
- Taxa that are named after them – again, link to taxon names in APNI (including higher taxa). It’s also a good idea to include a link when discussing eponymy.
Categories are listed at the end of a wikipedia article. Categories can help group articles with similarities.
Suggested Categories for Biography pages are, but not limited to:
- Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria
- yyyy births
- yyyy deaths
- Botanists active in Australia
- 20th-century Australian botanists
- 21st-century Australian botanists
- Women botanists
Also, look at categories in current articles similar to those you are editing to get more category ideas.
- Add links to everything you can, including place names, institutions, taxon names, occupations, other people, concepts (e.g. typification, eponymy) etc
- Use the Talk page to provide further justification for any changes you’ve made to existing information on the page (such as changing a date of birth), and remember to reply if people @ you!
- ^ Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. State Botanical Collection at the National Herbarium (accessed 24 November 2020)
- ^ Thiers, B. (2020 - continuously updated). National Herbarium of Victoria Collections Summary. Index Herbariorum. A global directory of public herbaria and associated staff. New York Botanical Garden’s Virtual Herbarium. Available from: MEL Collections Summary (accessed 25 August 2020)
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