While Herbarium (plant specimen archive) collections have increasingly been digitized and made available online, digitized herbarium collections remain somewhat inaccessible to large portions of the population—in large part because the interfaces to these collections assume the user has specialized knowledge of plants, knows what they are looking for, and is deeply engaged.

Building on previous experimental interface work, the Herbarium User Experience project (HerbUX) seeks to address this problem by generating a user study / needs document by talking to herbarium stakeholders (undergraduate science educators, herbarium staff, and museum professionals), and generating interface proposals based on the findings of the user study.

HerbUX is a collaboration between CDS, the Brown University Herbarium, and the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum, and is generously funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

Contributors to this project include Patrick Rashleigh (PI, CDS Lead), Rebecca Kartzinel(Co-PI, Herbarium Faculty Co-Director), Tim Whitfeld (Bell Museum Herbarium Collections Manager)