From Plant Press Vol. 9, Issue 2, from April 2006.
In March, Cristián Samper, Director of the National Museum of Natural History, and other Smithsonian staff attended the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Curitiba, Brazil. They carried with them a secret weapon: a 2-DVD set containing 78,736 images of plant type specimens. These disk sets were distributed to representatives of more than 180 countries and contained a basic message: "to conserve and manage your sovereign biological resources, you need to understand the species in your care...and, to better understand species, you need type specimens." All attendees found a copy waiting at their seats at the convention dinner and, in his address, Samper emphasized the powerful message contained within. The disks were enthusiastically received, according to Len Hirsch, Smithsonian's CBD representative.
The task of organizing the existing data and images on two disks and designing a user friendly interface that permitted searches by country (or geographical unit) fell to Ellen Farr and her staff. Alice Tangerini provided the artwork and graphics that gave the product a polished, professional look, and Rusty Russell supervised the overall production of the disks. In the end, it was an actual team effort for a virtual plant species collection.
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