Would it be appropriate for me to upload photos or scans (taken by myself) to my account of plant specimens that were collected by my late uncle? He was a biological science technician, and he left a collection of ~100 plant samples (mostly from 1982) labeled with the date, location, and collector (himself). They’re probably from an old science class assignment when he was in high school, but it feels like a waste to just throw them away.
Based on previous discussion this seems like a gray area that’s acceptable as long as I either (1) credit the collector in each observation or (2) create an account to post the relevant observations under the collector’s name.
Regarding whether to post them to iNaturalist or not, I could go either way, and I’m sure others may have more experience in this regard.
I do want to say that there’s no need to throw them away! I would contact a local herbarium and ask if they would take them. They would be preserved as best they could be in an herbarium, plus they might prove useful to future botanical studies. Most herbaria now digitize their collections and would likely get a better digital image of the specimens than you could with your phone/camera.
I don’t think iNat is really a great place for something like this for the reasons Tony laid out above. 100 observations is a fair amount. I agree with @nathanaaron that an herbarium would be a better place for this and would really maximize the value of the physical specimens.
Thank you for your input and recommendation to contact a local herbarium! That sounds like my best option. I’ll find a herbarium near where the specimens were collected and reach out to see if they’re interested.
I would say, they’re your photos now and you can post them. Best to make a sentence or two at the start to credit your uncle. Or, it is possible to set up a separate account for your uncle’s photos.
The main purpose of natural history / herbarium specimen and animal collections is to enable everybody to replicate an encounter with nature that happened at a documented time and place.
This means in my opinion that when i interact with an herbarium specimen, i have an encounter with nature. And i therefore think my own fotos of this encounter, would make for good iNat observations.
Please help me understand what is the problem when somebody is documenting an existing natural history collection? Are visitors taking fotos in museums and uploading them to iNat?
From my own experience: more than a decade ago i donated a private insect collection to a University, interested in these specimen. Unfortunatelly this University has not yet digitized their collection, which means the data i “contributed to science” are not available online until now, and i don’t know when they will be…
If i were in the same situation today, i would certainly document the collection with iNat, before giving it away.
The vast majority of collections are not on display for public interaction, and the philosophy of maintenance is based around their value as scientific data, not experiences (otherwise they wouldn’t be locked away in basement cabinets, etc.).
That said, if someone interacts with a specimen in an herbarium, they can make an observation of it, but at that time and place and marked as captive, so it will be casual grade.
Herbarium and other natural history specimens must be digitised at a certain minimum standard and with metadata standards as to the accuracy of the data. Low resolution JPG simply will not do. There is funding available for digitisation. If the University is not able to do it themself, they can possibly team up with neighbouring institutions in the area. This is however, a lot of work and it is understandably if the University may not be keen to do it.
Sorry i shortened my sentence and left out the obvious. Clearly only people who have access to a collection are able to replicate an encounter; and even improve on the experience by applying scientific methods on specimen and/or associated data.
To me it is obvious that replicating (and improving onto) the original enounter with nature is the main purpose of natural history collections. As this is the reason why we keep these collections in accessible museums and universities; as opposed to inaccessible deposits, where the data and the specimen would probably be even safer, but it wouldn’t allow for the experience and its derived scientific work.
I am certainly aware that natural history specimen should be documented and digitised with a certain minimum standard… a reality check shows however that these standards are often not held up. Not only do many specimen lack an adequat documentation, also professional digitisations is sometimes more than slightly flawed See e.g: https://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/L/ih/calisto0001_i.htm
In reality it seems that even a mediocre iNat observation is much better than some of the “professional” documentations and digitisations, one has to work with in real life…
Why do i even have to argue that iNat is better? Everbody here might long know!
Perhaps it should be pointed out that herbarium specimens (as above) needs to be scanned at a sufficient high resolution. It is immediately noticeable when it is a low resolution if the typed or written text cannot be read. iNaturalist allow up to 2048 pixels which is clearly not enough to identify most specimens. Perhaps herbarium and museum specimens should be limited if it is not accompanied by a Live Photo.