Publishing historical primary biodiversity information: The good and the bad

South Africa has a long history of collecting primary biodiversity information. Most of these historical collections have been stored as archives in museums, herbariums and research institutions across South Africa. Institutions such as the University of Cape Town, Iziko Museum, Durban National Museum, Agricultural Research Council and Albany Museum have historical collections dating back to 1970s. This historical biodiversity information was stored in hard copies such as journals and books, these storage formats made sharing of biodiversity information limited and with a high risk of loss. Digitization initiatives have been undertaken across South Africa with the aim of making historical biodiversity information digital and facilitating its sharing. The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) has encouraged the digitization of historical collections by offering digitization grants to institutions with historical records to digitize. The digitization grants initiative has enabled historical biodiversity information to become available for publishing. The poster presentation will cover issues encountered during the reformatting and processing of historical collections to conform to biodiversity information standards so as to allow for publishing through GBIF. It will also cover the benefits of working with historical collections as well as issues encountered during the digitization process and efforts to allow for sharing of data on a public platform.