Digitalisation at the Bots
Collecting and curating botanical samples as herbarium specimens dates back to the 16th century. The Italian physician Luca Ghini realised that dried plant specimens could be used for teaching medical students plant identification throughout the year, even when plant samples were not available during the winter.
Today there are over 3,500 herbaria across the world holding almost 400 million botanical specimens. The National Herbarium in the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin holds approximately 600,000 herbarium specimens dating from the early 1800s to the present day.
It contains the most complete collection for the island of Ireland but also contains specimens collected across the globe, from the arctic to Australia. Some of our specimens represent the first encounters of western scientists with plant species, such as the Handkerchief tree (Davidia involucrata). As such, they hold a wealth of information on natural and cultural history.
Herbarium specimens have tremendous potential outside of their primary uses to discover and describe flora. They have been used to track the movement of invasive species, to monitor changes in species composition and biodiversity assessments, to determine atmospheric changes and to uncover genetic changes over time. They are physical records of biological interaction and can be used for both scientific and historical study. Each specimen represents a snap-shot in time and as a collection they are an extensive time-series to interrogate.
What makes herbarium specimens so useful is the data contained on the label or on the notes associated with the specimen. A specimen without a label is almost worthless. The details of the plant name, collection location, collector, date and often additional notes on habitat, altitude or plant condition are immensely important.
The combined data from all these specimens allow us to track past changes and help predict future responses. However, to date we have catalogued data from only a limited number of the specimens within the herbarium - approximately 10% are fully digitised. This is mainly due to the large numbers within the collection but it is now changing with the help of digital cameras and automated imaging technologies. Images of herbarium specimens capture unique moments in history and represent hundreds or thousands of data points for each specimen. The National Herbarium has embarked on a project to take high-resolution images of all our specimens and to extract data from the collection. This is a long-term project, but to begin it we have started to work on the Irish collection of approximately 60,000 specimens. The DigiHerb project is co-funded by the North-West Europe Interreg programme and is a collaboration with two other herbaria in the North-West Europe region, the State Museum of Natural History in Karlsruhe, Germany and Ghent University, Belgium. The project aims to digitise material in each herbarium and to share the data on a combined portal (https://digiherb.symbiota.org/). We are using a high throughput imaging conveyor belt system to capture images of the specimens at each site. The data from the specimen labels is being manually extracted, but we are also running trials on AI data capture to speed up this process. The overall goal will be to have the images and data available to the public to facilitate further scientific and historical studies.
We are also working closely with the Digital Repository of Ireland, which is hosting the high resolution images and the associated data. In particular, we have started by sharing the Robert Lloyd Prager collection online on the DRI (https://repository.dri.ie/catalog/kd17sp309). This project was funded by the Nowlan Digitisation Grant scheme of the Royal Irish Academy. The Praeger collection represents one of the most important subsets of our collection. Praeger deposited specimens from his fieldwork across Ireland during which he created lists of species in each county. These lists were compiled into a catalogue of plants in Ireland, giving the most comprehensive census of plants across the island. This initial census has been added to throughout the years and forms the basis of our conservation assessments of Irish plants.
Of course, we have much more than Irish specimens in the National Herbarium. We have specimens of global significance from across the world and these will also be imaged in time. The imaging of the Irish specimens will be finished in August 2025, after which we hope to continue onto digitisation of the World collection.
Earley Collection a new donation of artworks for public enjoyment presented to the Office of Public Works
Over the course of fifty years Patrick Earley assembled an
outstanding collection of Irish topographical art, focusing
on portrayals of Dublin and Wicklow over the period 1770
to 1870. The collection has recently been acquired by
the State and a selection will be exhibited in the historic
Daniel O’Connell room at the City Assembly House. The
exhibition will feature early nineteenth-century views of
Powerscourt Waterfall and Grafton Street, of Georgian
College Green and Victorian Bray. Among the artists
represented will be William Sadler, John Henry Campbell
and Patrick Vincent Duffy.
It is wonderful that a few months after this important donation a selection from the collection will be put on public display in an exhibition that will run over the summer months of 2025 at the City Assembly House, Dublin. This is a most appropriate venue, as the building was erected in the mid-1760s by the artists of Ireland as the first purpose-built, public exhibition space for the display of
art in Britain or Ireland. William Laffan author and art historian, who has written a catalogue to accompany the Exhibition
states that “ Here at the City Assembly House, artists such as Thomas Roberts and William Ashford competed for public
approval and the Irish – specifically Wicklow – landscape was very often their subject matter of choice. In 1772, for example, Roberts, William Ashford and James Coy (c. 1750-80) all exhibited views of Tinnehinch at the Society."
William Laffan in his catalogue further elaborates on this special cause for celebration outlining how the Earley collection, the product of decades of shrewd and insightful collecting, has been acquired by the State under the provisions of section 1003 of the Taxes Consolidation Act (1997) which has not only brought entire individual masterpieces to the National Gallery of Ireland and the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork (among other institutions) but has allowed collections, such as that formed by Richard Wood, now
at Fota, County Cork, to be acquired for the enjoyment of the Irish public. The OPW has benefited too with the Carton paintings of the Mallaghan family coming to the State under the Section 1003 Act and the paintings handsomely displayed at Castletown. Similarly, the cultural heritage of Waterford has been immensely enhanced by the acquisition, under the same scheme, of superlative collections of Irish Georgian silver. The legislation specifically limits its applicability to outstanding examples of works of art which are manifestly ‘pre-eminent in their class’, whose acquisition would ‘significantly enhance’ Ireland’s cultural patrimony – a high bar indeed, and a validation of Patrick’s connoisseurship. For this collection to be donated to OPW a number of people were instrumental in facilitating this initiative. I would like in particular to acknowledge the assistance of Sir Robert Goff, John Kennedy of the Department of Culture, Communication and Sport, Joanne Bannon and Roisin Flynn of
OPW’s Registrar’s Office and Stuart Cole of Adam’s. My thanks also to the OPW’s Art Management Group who have providing guidance and governance on the donation throughout.
The arrival of the Patrick Earley Collection at OPW comes at a very suitable time. Both Emo Court, Laois and Damer House, Roscrea are both undergoing conservation works and new
picture hang displays are in planning. A selection of Earley paintings are already on display for Season 2025 in the newly
re-hung Drawing Room of Emo Court. The House has just reopened following conservation works and a visit there to
view both the Earley paintings and all the displays at Emo Court is strongly recommended. It is planned that some of the Earley collection will be on display at Damer House, Roscrea from the Autumn of 2026 onwards as part of the new schemes being unveiled under the grant aided EU Just Transition Funds Failte/
OPW project. The cataloguing of all the Earley Collection is being undertaken by Joanne Bannon, Historic Collections Registrar, OPW.
For the summer of 2025 the Irish Georgian Society at The City Assembly House a large selection of the Patrick Earley Collection can be viewed in Dublin by visitors prior to their display and as a preview to their presentation at Damer House, Roscrea, Co. Tipperary. Our thanks to Donough Cahill, Director of the IGS and his team for presenting the collection for public enjoyment this
summer. Our very particular thanks to William Laffan for researching and writing up the excellent catalogue entries for
the paintings and for coming up with the proposal to display the collection to visitors this summer at the Irish Georgian Society’s home.
