herbUA Collectors: An open-source framework for online publication of the herbarium collector-centric data

The digitisation of herbarium collections is typically aimed at mobilising and distributing data about the specimens, while often omitting data about the individuals who contributed to the formation of these collections. Despite the obvious need to create databases of herbarium collectors, as well as to structure and standardise the data about them, there is currently no consolidated view on this regard. Many efforts have been made to develop various collector-centric databases, but there is no simple and quick way to present such data online by self-running herbaria or small initiatives. Therefore, here I introduce a framework that allows for easy configuration of WordPress to display data about herbarium collectors.

This article describes the herbUA Collectors repo, allowing for the configuration of a standard WordPress installation for: (a) filling and online publishing the database of the herbarium collectors; (b) representing records about each collector as a single web page; (c) providing an interactive map search facility; (d) visualising the basic statistics on the database.