E. C. Smith Herbarium (ACAD)
Latest version published by Acadia University on Sep 30, 2019
Today, the E. C. Smith Herbarium contains over 200,000 specimens, including vascular plants, bryophytes, and fungi. It is the largest herbarium in Atlantic Canada and the first Canadian herbarium to have a digital database with scanned images of the collection. The Acadia Herbarium began as an initial gift to Dr. H. G. Perry of a small collection made by G. U. Hay of St. John, New Brunswick. Included in this collection were a few plants collected by J. Fowler of New Brunswick before he went to Queen's University. These first specimens were collected between 1868 and 1880. Some of the plants were cultivated and some were from the United States. Subsequently, in these early years, the additions were made chiefly through the work of Dr. H. G. Perry and his students. No records were available until the collection numbered some 6,000 sheets. Included in the 6,000, however, are a number of sheets from the Gray Herbarium Expeditions to Nova Scotia in 1920 and 1921. Of the specimens above the 6000 count, the majority have been added by the work of Dr. M. V. Roscoe and her students from 1928-1940 and Dr. H. P. Banks and his students from 1940-1946. In 1946 a large collection was being assembled by Mr. David Erskine, who catalogued the Flora of Wolfville and vicinity. During Dr. E. C. Smith's tenure at Acadia (1947-1971) the number of specimens grew from 20,000 sheets to over 70,000. In 1970, Acadia University's Board of Governors announced that the department's excellent collection of plants would be named the E. C. Smith Herbarium as tribute to him for his contributions to the collection.
Data Records
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 91,745 records.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Downloads
Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:
| Data as a DwC-A file | download 91,745 records in English (7 MB) - Update frequency: as needed |
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| Metadata as an EML file | download in English (15 KB) |
| Metadata as an RTF file | download in English (11 KB) |
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
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Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is Acadia University. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: e8a25a42-f125-476c-8554-3ec21cd51a84. Acadia University publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Canada Biodiversity Information Facility.
Keywords
ACAD; E. C. Smith Herbarium; Harriet Irving Botanical Gardens; Cape Breton University; Acadia University; Canada; Nova Scotia; New Brunswick; Maine; Vermont; collection; herbarium; specimens; Canadensys; Occurrence; Specimen
External data
The resource data is also available in other formats
| Old Canadensys explorer | http://data.canadensys.net/explorer/en/resources/acad-specimens UTF-8 HTML |
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| GBIF data portal | http://www.gbif.org/dataset/e8a25a42-f125-476c-8554-3ec21cd51a84 UTF-8 HTML |
| Canadensys Explorer | http://explorer.canadensys.net/occurrences/search?q=data_resource_uid:dr43#tab_mapView UTF-8 HTML |
Contacts
Who created the resource:
Who can answer questions about the resource:
Who filled in the metadata:
Who else was associated with the resource:
Geographic Coverage
Primarily the Flora of the Acadian Forest Region. However, there are smaller collections within the herbarium that stem from research initiatives across the globe.
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [42.56, -74.12], North East [46.31, -59.83] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
This dataset includes all vascular plant specimens from the E. C. Smith Herbarium that have been digitized, databased and geo-referenced. The top 3 families are Cyperaceae (11%), Asteraceae (10%) and Poaceae (8%).
| Kingdom | Plantae (Plants) |
|---|---|
| Class | Equisetopsida (Vascular plants) |
| Family | Cyperaceae (Sedges), Asteraceae (Sunflowers), Poaceae (Grasses) |
Temporal Coverage
| Formation Period | 1854-present |
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Project Data
No Description available
| Title | E. C. Smith Herbarium Digital Repository |
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| Identifier | CESP2018-005 |
| Funding | Various; CFI |
The personnel involved in the project:
Sampling Methods
All data are manually digitized as text from high resolution scans of each herbarium specimen.
| Study Extent | Digitization of Vascular plants from the E. C. Smith Herbarium with a focus on plants of the Acadian Forest Region. |
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| Quality Control | Records are corrected on an ad hoc basis. |
Method step description:
- Data are entered into the main database through in-house software, some of which is verified electronically (e.g. all taxonomic data using ITIS).
Collection Data
| Collection Name | E. C. Smith Herbarium |
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| Collection Identifier | ACAD |
| Parent Collection Identifier | ACAD |
| Specimen preservation methods | Mounted |
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Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | http://data.canadensys.net/ipt/manage/metadata-additional.do?r=nspm-specimens |
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| e8a25a42-f125-476c-8554-3ec21cd51a84 | |
| https://data.canadensys.net/ipt/resource?r=acad-specimens |