Towards a common approach to electronic Australasian floras CHAH/HISCOM Workshop 3-4 December 2007

Why collaborate  Lessons of collaborations by herbaria  Long tradition in Australasian herbaria  Central Australian Flora, Flora of Australia, State Floras  In IT  HISPID  HISCOM  Australia’s Virtual Herbarium  Shoestring  AVH partly  AVH2/EWS (Weeds CRC)  AVH Data Capture project - NHT  Australian Plant Census (APC) – Cwlth DEW  GBIF/TDWG  Species Profiles – weeds, EPBC act (Cwlth DEW)  Museums – Herbaria: Atlas of Living Australia (NCRIS)

Aims of meeting  Seek collaboration in Efloras  Why the urgency  Raised early in 2007  CHAH phone hookup in June/July 2007  CHAH at AGM in September 2007 agreed to this meeting on basis of current eFlora projects:  Existing eFlora pushes  My driver: Flora of South Australia  Also Marine Flora of WA  To wait for ALA may take longer than anticipate – already delays

Aims of meeting  Outcomes of collaboration in Efloras  Sharing of ideas  improved approaches  Ensure against going down cul de sacs  Cost savings  Avoiding double handling  Develop a roadmap for a common approach  resolution – only as much as we can provide  Data standard for interchange  Cf. AVH – each specimen database differs  HISPID5 data dictionary  cf. APC – traditional – are our censuses compatible?

What we don’t want  Don’t lose sight of  current global developments  GBIF/TDWG  Encyclopedia of Life  Other global projects – Species Plantarum  The rich potential of the Atlas of Living Australia project