THE PRESENT STATE OF THE
DIGITALIZATION IN D.R.CONGO
CASE OF THE HERBARIUM OF LWIRO
Mwanga Mwanga Ithe1, Wabika Dumbo1, Franck
Theeten2, Mergen Patricia2, Salvator Ntore3, Steven
Dessein3
1Centre
de Recherche en Sciences Naturelles/Lwiro (CRSN-Lwiro)
2Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA)/Tervuren
3Botanic Garden Meise/Belgium (BGM)
Presentation of the Lwiro Center
The CRSN/Lwiro is a research center located in SouthKivu, Democratic Republic of Congo which is active in
several domains such as botany, zoology, geophysical
sciences and humanities sciences.
Presentation of the Lwiro Center
 The Research Center of Lwiro include five departments:
o Biology,
o Geophysics,
o Nutrition,
o Documentation and
o Environment
Herbaria in D.R.Congo
The Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.Congo) has c. 15
herbaria throughout its territory
Their size varies from 5000 to 150.000 specimens
The total amount of herbarium specimens in D.R.Congo
is estimated between 300.000 and 400.000 specimens.
Many herbaria suffered during the last decades because
of the political instability in the country
About 10% of the herbarium specimens are
consequently attacked by insects, but the situation
varies from herbarium to herbarium
The herbarium of Lwiro
 The herbarium of Lwiro is the third in D.R.Congo after
Yangambi and Kinshasa (IUK); it is part of the Biology
department of CRSN/Lwiro.
 Lwiro herbarium has been created in 1953.
 Within the herbarium we have the following
laboratories:
- Laboratory of Systematic and plant Taxonomy
- Laboratory of plant ecology
- Laboratory of Ethno-botany
 In the Lwiro Herbarium we have 15,000 specimens
African Plants Initiative (API)
In 2009 a project (API) was started in collaboration with
Botanic Garden Meise and funded by the Mellon
Foundation in order to rehabilitate and digitize the type
collections and the collections of the endemic plants in
10 herbaria of D.R.Congo
As a consequence, the digitalization of herbaria in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has already
reached a good level
About 18,000 updated and scanned images are now
posted and available on the website of JSTOR.
Nevertheless, there are still numerous specimens to be
scanned across the country.
API - LWIRO
The herbarium of Lwiro has not escaped this
opportunity.
LWIRO started the work in 2011 by the support of the
Botanic Garden Meise (BGM), the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, the Royal Museum for Central Africa
(RMCA) and the Word Conservation Society (WCS).
Aim of digitalization in herbarium
 To preserve and to protect specimens against risks of
deterioration by manipulation
 To archive collections and to put them available to
researchers and the general public
 To allow the public to reach these collections and to
consult them for scientific purposes
Methodology
 Selection of specimens to digitize according to the
goals of the project
 Preparation of the selected material for digitalization
 Scanning of specimens with herbscan at 600 dpi
Result and prospective
Through this occasion more than
800 specimens of types and
endemic plants of Central Africa
had been digitized and are now
available on the portal of JSTOR:
http://plants.jstor.org/lwiro .
 Scientific names of 1,000
specimens of plants have been
updated.
http://biocase.africamuseum.be/biocase_rmca/querytool/main.cgi?dsa=cabin_crsn_lwiro
Result and prospective
 About 500 specimens were published with CABIN
project in collaboration with the Royal Museum for
Central Africa - Tervuren in Belgium.
 Approximately 3,000 samples were updated and
digitized.
 But the work continues, currently about 700 samples
for upper and lower plants (Angiosperm and Bryophyte)
of Irangi reserve, which will probably be published on
the website of the CABIN in a second project.
Result and prospective
 With these initiatives, our institution got an
experience in digitization of natural history
collections.
 But we are still looking for more training and
collaboration opportunities in order to improve this
work.
 Ultimately, we would like to get all the collections
digitalized and published online to improve their
accessibility and keep valuable scientific data in a
safe format.
Acknowledgment
 Staff of Botanic Garden of Meise, for facilitating
digitizing work.
 Our thanks go to the Director and all person of Royal
Museum for Central Africa for checking, normalizing
and publishing database into BioCASe.
 We say also thanks for WCS and ARCOS for their
assistance in this kind of work.
 We can not forgot the Belgian cooperation for
facilitating our participation to the TDWG 2014
conference.
We say Thanks