A grant has been awarded to Murray State University under the direction of Dr. Dayle Saar to acquire new herbarium cabinets to enlarge and improve storage facilities in the university herbarium. The existing database will also be improved by adding information on the specimens and making data accessible worldwide over the Internet. The herbarium contains an important collection of Kentucky flora, with a good collection from a biologically rich and little-studied region of the state. Student workers will participate in the curation and database efforts. Students from Geosciences and Biosciences will work together to assemble range maps for specimens and to correlate herbarium data with other sources of data, such as soils and species associations. The facility will hold an open house to showcase the improvements and to expose students and the general public to the herbarium resources. A workshop will be held to assemble a small teaching collection for local schools.
