There’s a first time for everything and last week the RBGE herbarium digitisation team hosted its first WeDigBio onsite transcription event!

Worldwide Engagement for Digitising Biocollections, WeDigBio, is an annual global campaign to engage the public to capture digital data about biodiversity collections. Our WeDigBio volunteers learnt how to decipher and transcribe herbarium collection labels from legume specimens, collected in Australia over a period of several hundred years.

Volunteers transcribing specimens

They also enjoyed a behind the scenes tour of the herbarium from curation staff, and an interactive Q & A with Botanist Tiina Sarkinen, who highlighted the critical role the herbarium plays in her research on Solanceae and the Neotropics.

Talk by Tiina Sarkinen

The volunteers thoroughly enjoyed the event and didn’t want to stop transcribing!

You can help too by joining our Leguminosae of Australia expedition online.