Junior Elaina Plankey (me) sorting through family and genus folders
A herbarium functions like a library, considering pressed specimens as little packets of knowledge. Often, specimens will be loaned out or gifted between herbaria or individual collectors, but a much faster way to access that data is through digitization. The process of digitization is relatively simple: confirm the taxonomic nomenclature is correct, enter data, photograph, and share the information. This project has combed through the vast collection of the Keefe Herbarium, intending to reopen the herbarium and allow the scientific community to benefit from the previously inaccessible wealth of information. St. Norbert College has kept the Keefe Herbarium since Fr. Anselm Keefe’s time, but it hasn’t been utilized for many years.
The project was led by me, junior Organismal Biology Major Elaina Plankey, working in the summer of 2025 under the Anselm M. Keefe Science Scholarship. I fulfilled the role of the “Curatorial Assistant” since the revitalization of the herbarium. Professional botanist and S.N.C.-visiting scholar Charlie Harmon volunteered her time in helping with this research, providing guidance with her experience in other herbaria. She fulfilled the role of the “Curator.” My mentor in this project was Dr. Anindo Choudhury, Professor of Biology and Environmental Science at St. Norbert College; he is the “Herbarium Supervisor.” The St. Norbert Abbey has graciously funded this project in honor of Fr. Anselm Keefe.
The difficulty in digitizing the Keefe Herbarium lies in its lack of maintenance for many years. The original filing system seems to be from the 1960s, although some specimen folders show records of some scant updating occurring in the 2010s. To get to the digitizing stage, the majority of the summer from around June 1 through July 23 was used to reorganize the herbarium using existing genus & family folders. Modern herbaria typically follow a "top-down" hierarchical taxonomic filing system, whereby specimens are first arranged into their broadest taxonomic groups, and then filed alphabetically based on increasing specificity. While the previous filing system did separate fungi, bryophytes and lichens, all of its vascular plant specimens were filed by genus together. This is confusing and makes it nearly impossible to find a specimen, as there are some genera that belong to very different families with the same or incredibly similar names.
This process was not smooth, and we faced difficulties throughout. Once during the initial filing process, Charlie Harmon and I had to work in the dark as the lights suddenly shut off in the Gehl Mulva Science Center while we were working on specimens – a campus-wide outage was to blame. We had hundreds of specimens out, and couldn’t leave suddenly as they could be compromised if left outside of the herbaria cabinets overnight.
Additionally, due to concerns of health risks associated with specimens preserved using uranium nitrate, there was a pause in the progression of the project. Uranium nitrate is a radioactive compound known to have been used experimentally by Fr. Keefe for preservation of specimen pigments. These concerns were assured, however, by Anindo Choudhury, Nelson Ham, and the use of a Geiger counter – the Keefe Herbarium is safely at ~15 counts per minute. The search for what is suspected to be a moderate collection of preserved specimen vials is still ongoing – but they are definitely not in the Keefe Herbarium.
Once the specimens folders had been organized, the task of taxonomically updating the specimens folders was undertaken. The folders have two labels on the outside: Genus & Family. The current folder count is: 71 Ferns & Fern Allies, 31 Gymnosperms and a total of 2091 Angiosperms – 399 monocots & 1692 dicots. This is likely to change, however, because of later reorganization of folders and the additions of specimens unhoused in the cabinets that are currently of low priority. Each folder holds at least one specimen, although some hold more than 10. Sites used in the verification of information are: Tropicos, World Flora Online (WFO) and Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).
Despite best efforts, sometimes information from one site alone is not accurate enough and needs to be cross-referenced; oftentimes, best judgment calls are made on what pieces of information to trust from which sites. For example, while working with the dicots, Tropicos would always list the class as “Equisetopsida,” while GBIF would use the class “Magnoliopsida.” After much deliberation, it was decided that Magnoliopsida would be the more useful term for our purposes as a herbarium. The process of checking and verifying folder information is ongoing.
The next step is digitization, which has two stages: Transcribing label data and then uploading specimen photos onto the portal. A portal has been created called “The Keefe Herbarium at Saint Norbert College (SNC)” on the Consortium of Midwest Herbaria, which is a part of the SEINet Portal Network. This allows records to be retrieved from the portal network, which contains 24 million records from over 450 collections and makes information available to researchers, educators and the general public. At the time of this writing, stage one of digitization has been completed for 42 specimens.
The process to do so isn’t especially difficult, but it is a gradual process. First, specimen label data is added alongside a unique SNC barcode, allowing the Keefe Herbarium to claim ownership of the physical specimen and the digital record of that specimen. Then, high-resolution photos are taken on the photo station in the remounting room, utilizing Adobe Lightroom to finally be uploaded fully to the consortium. The vast majority of the Keefe Herbarium’s specimens need to be remounted to be photographed properly, a timely process, so the division of the digitization process is to make the label information available as soon as possible.
Throughout this process, I built a site dedicated to the Keefe Herbarium Digitization Project – including photos of the project as it progressed, as well as background on Fr. Anselm Maynard Keefe and information about the herbarium as more is uncovered about this space and all the potential it has for scientific discovery.
The next steps in this project are to continue digitization of the specimens, remounting and repairing of specimens, and the inclusion of specimens not stored properly in herbarium cabinets. After that, the herbarium can function as it should, hopefully becoming a center for botanical learning.
Sources: Tropicos, World Flora Online (WFO), Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)