United States Virtual Herbarium Workshop At the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis Missouri, 26-28 January 2010

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This project will bring together representatives from the herbarium (plant museum) community along with affiliated computer scientists and information technologists to develop a national plan to make information available from this group. The group will focus on establishing community best practices to acquire information, to use this information and to disseminate the information to the public. Curators will develop a sustainable plan to mobilize the community and seek funds to meet community goals. The herbarium community has four main long term goals: 1) digitize all herbarium collections in the country by the year 2020, 2) enhance research, teaching and service potentials of herbarium curators and affiliates, 3) recruit students from underrepresented groups to careers in the herbarium sciences, to provide a continuing brain trust in the 21st century, and 4) provide information to the public, K-12 teachers and students, college and university faculty and students, scientists, corporations and decision-makers in effective and useful formats. The herbarium community offers a tremendous potential database for systematists, ecologists, climatologists, and evolutionary biologists. This meeting will nationalize ongoing efforts and integrate local and regional progress to provide herbarium data at a continental scale through the United States Virtual Herbarium.