THE PRESENT STATE OF THE DIGITALIZATION IN D.R.CONGO CASE OF THE HERBARIUM OF LWIRO Mwanga Mwanga Ithe 1, Wabika Dumbo 1, Franck Theeten 2, Mergen Patricia 2, Salvator Ntore 3, Steven Dessein 3 1 Centre de Recherche en Sciences Naturelles/Lwiro (CRSN-Lwiro) 2 Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA)/Tervuren 3 Botanic Garden Meise/Belgium (BGM)

Presentation of the Lwiro Center  The CRSN/Lwiro is a research center located in South- Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo which is active in several domains such as botany, zoology, geophysical sciences and humanities sciences.

 The Research Center of Lwiro include five departments: o Biology, o Geophysics, o Nutrition, o Documentation and o Environment Presentation of the Lwiro Center

Herbaria in D.R.Congo  The Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.Congo) has c. 15 herbaria throughout its territory  Their size varies from 5000 to specimens  The total amount of herbarium specimens in D.R.Congo is estimated between and specimens.  Many herbaria suffered during the last decades because of the political instability in the country  About 10% of the herbarium specimens are consequently attacked by insects, but the situation varies from herbarium to herbarium

 The herbarium of Lwiro is the third in D.R.Congo after Yangambi and Kinshasa (IUK); it is part of the Biology department of CRSN/Lwiro.  Lwiro herbarium has been created in  Within the herbarium we have the following laboratories: -Laboratory of Systematic and plant Taxonomy -Laboratory of plant ecology -Laboratory of Ethno-botany  In the Lwiro Herbarium we have 15,000 specimens The herbarium of Lwiro

African Plants Initiative (API)  In 2009 a project (API) was started in collaboration with Botanic Garden Meise and funded by the Mellon Foundation in order to rehabilitate and digitize the type collections and the collections of the endemic plants in 10 herbaria of D.R.Congo  As a consequence, the digitalization of herbaria in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has already reached a good level  About 18,000 updated and scanned images are now posted and available on the website of JSTOR. Nevertheless, there are still numerous specimens to be scanned across the country.

API - LWIRO  The herbarium of Lwiro has not escaped this opportunity.  LWIRO started the work in 2011 by the support of the Botanic Garden Meise (BGM), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) and the Word Conservation Society (WCS).

Aim of digitalization in herbarium  To preserve and to protect specimens against risks of deterioration by manipulation  To archive collections and to put them available to researchers and the general public  To allow the public to reach these collections and to consult them for scientific purposes

Methodology  Selection of specimens to digitize according to the goals of the project  Preparation of the selected material for digitalization  Scanning of specimens with herbscan at 600 dpi

Result and prospective  Through this occasion more than 800 specimens of types and endemic plants of Central Africa had been digitized and are now available on the portal of JSTOR:  Scientific names of 1,000 specimens of plants have been updated.

Result and prospective  About 500 specimens were published with CABIN project in collaboration with the Royal Museum for Central Africa - Tervuren in Belgium.  Approximately 3,000 samples were updated and digitized.  But the work continues, currently about 700 samples for upper and lower plants (Angiosperm and Bryophyte) of Irangi reserve, which will probably be published on the website of the CABIN in a second project.

Result and prospective  With these initiatives, our institution got an experience in digitization of natural history collections.  But we are still looking for more training and collaboration opportunities in order to improve this work.  Ultimately, we would like to get all the collections digitalized and published online to improve their accessibility and keep valuable scientific data in a safe format.

Acknowledgment  Staff of Botanic Garden of Meise, for facilitating digitizing work.  Our thanks go to the Director and all person of Royal Museum for Central Africa for checking, normalizing and publishing database into BioCASe.  We say also thanks for WCS and ARCOS for their assistance in this kind of work.  We can not forgot the Belgian cooperation for facilitating our participation to the TDWG 2014 conference.

We say Thanks