The New York Botanical Garden Herbarium has been digitizing plant specimens for over twelve years and has made more than 350,000 digital images available online in its Virtual Herbarium.

With the growing emphasis on rapid digitization, in 2011 the Herbarium has doubled its production capabilities using imaging workstations comprised of affordable, off-the-shelf digital photography equipment. Standardization of imaging procedures has improved efficiency, reduced errors, and streamlined image quality control resulting in a dramatic increase in the total number of images in the collection.

The New York Botanical Garden Herbarium’s imaging procedures and workstations will be presented along with considerations made towards image resolution, lighting and physical space requirements.  Additionally, we will talk about the impact of increased image production as it pertains to image processing and archiving including batch processing, file format considerations and storage requirements.