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Address:
National Taiwan University Library, 1 Roosevelt Rd. Sec. 4, Taipei 106, Taiwan
Contact:
ichunlin@ntu.edu.tw
Phone: 02-33662362
Fax: 02-23629860
Links:
TAI Herbarium
National Taiwan University
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Description:
TAI was established in 1929. For over 70 years, TAI has been a base for investigating Taiwan's indigenous plants and an important base for plant research in Eastern Asia. Since its establishment, TAI has been continuously conducting plant investigation and collection in Taiwan and adjacent areas, such as Southeast Asia, Southern Pacific islands and further exchanging specimens with foreign herbariums. To date, TAI has exchanged specimens with 145 institutions in more than 28 countries. TAI's abundant and diversified collection amounts to 250,000 specimens, most of which are Taiwan indigenous plants and cover at least 95% species of Taiwan indigenous Tracheophyta. In addition, TAI's collection includes 1,000 type specimens and more than 60,000 specimens of Taiwan indigensous plans collected more than 50 years ago. Therefore, TAI is one of the major centers for researching in plants in Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
In order to provide easier acess for general public to understand plants, TAI set up outdoor exhibition areas in its surrounding areas and existing green houses in 2002. These outdoor exhibitions are designed not only to preserve live plants and but also to invite the general public to enjoy and learn about plants.
For a maximal utilization of the specimens information, a computerized data storage and retrieval system have been developed for the past five years. For the present project, five major activities will be pursued in the ferture year:
* (1) digitizing representative species images.
* (2) metadata for each specimen (including location).
* (3) digitization of Flora of Taiwan (1st edition, 1975-79).
* (4) digitization of historical botanical literature including Icones Platarum Formosanarum (Hayata, 1911-21).
* (5) the creation of web-based database for specimens and historical literature.
(Information from the Website)
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