For the past year or so I have been volunteering some time at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. As enjoyable as it is to make a trip to Fort Worth, and as much as I like the people at the BRIT, I was still happy to learn of a project I could do at my desk at home. 

The BRIT has a huge collection of botanical specimens, which are currently not accessible to anyone who is not willing to make a trip to Fort Worth Texas. Because scientific information should be generally available to anyone in the world who wants or needs it, the BRIT has launched a project to digitize all the specimen fact sheets of botanical life in Texas.  

At home on my computer I get a set of photographs of specimens, some with handwritten notes, some with typed data. I transcribe the data into pre-formatted Excel spreadsheets. These sheets will ultimately form a database which will be available to researchers world-wide via the Internet.

The work is both enjoyable and fascinating.  The more I learn about plants, the more amazed I am at the diversity of life on earth. This is why I am such a passionate environmentalist. I do what I can to ensure that the biodiversity is preserved.

The picture above shows what I see on my computer screen when I am working on this project. the top part shows the source document; the bottom shows the Excel spreadsheet.