A webinar on the Digitization and Mobilization of Plants Specimen Data: The Lagos Experience held on Wednesday, October 12, 2022.
The webinar is part of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)-Biodiversity Information for Development (BID) jointly funded project.
It focused on “Expanding the visibility of the Lagos Herbarium through the Digitization and Mobilization of Plant Specimen Data”.
In her remarks, the Principal Investigator, Dr Temitope Onuminya of the Department of Botany, took participants through experiences and successes garnered during the 18-month project.
While appreciating the University management led by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, FAS, for the commitment to research, Dr. Onuminya gave an overview of the entire project, reaffirming its objective to reposition the University of Lagos Herbarium for the purpose of ensuring access for conservation assessment, policy-making and stakeholder use.
The Principal Investigator reeled out the success stories of the project which includes; the mobilization of over 14,000 plant specimen data, imaging of over 7,000 plant specimens, capacity building in biodiversity informatics and data handling, development of an Electronic identification access key to ease identification of plant materials as well as academic articles among others.
Other speakers at the webinar including the acting Curator of the University of Lagos Herbarium, Dr. Nosa George spoke on efforts already put into ensuring the reclassification, reorganization and reconciliation of plant specimens in the UNILAG Herbarium, Plants Specimen Mobilization and Digitization process, Data cleaning, the Electronic identification access key for the UNILAG herbarium, Data publishing and other major aspects of the project.
In his remarks, the Vice-Chancellor, University of Lagos and Chief host of the webinar, Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, FAS, was full of gratitude to sponsors of the project and the entire project team for the commitment and success stories.
He reaffirmed the commitment of the University of Lagos to solution-driven research for the growth of education, enhanced global relevance and competitiveness among the comity of ivory towers as well as National development.
