James C. Parks Herbarium

The James C. Parks Herbarium is the herbarium of Millersville University of Pennsylvania. It was formerly known simply as the Millersville University Herbarium until its dedication in 2004 in honor of its late Curator, James C. Parks. The herbarium is registered globally at Index Herbariorum as MVSC; that being an abbreviation for "Millersville State College", as the University was known at the time that MVSC was chosen.[1]

Specimen holdings

The herbarium houses more than 20,000 specimens.[2] The collection can be searched and records with images downloaded or mapped at the Herbarium's website. Most of these specimens are of vascular plants collected from the lower Susquehanna River valley. Specimens in the collection date back to the 1830s, with collection density increasingly substantially in the late 1850s to mid 1860s, which coincides roughly with the University's founding as Millersville State Normal School in 1855.

Other Products

The herbarium launched NatureAtlas in 2008 to serve as its specimen repository database[3] as well as a tool to manage student collection projects in Millersville University's Plant Systematics course.[4] A number of other institutions have adopted the use of NatureAtlas for course-related biotic mapping projects or bioblitzes.[5]

Curators

The Herbarium's first official curator was James C. Parks, who served as such from 1967 until his death in 2002. Since 2005, Christopher R. Hardy has served as the herbarium's curator.

References
  1. "Herbarium Details: Millersville University". The New York Botanical Garden. Retrieved 16 January 2015.
  2. "James C. Parks Herbarium".
  3. "NatureAtlas".
  4. "Hardy CR, NW Hardy. 2018. Adapting traditional field activities in natural history education to an emerging paradigm in biodiversity informatics. American Biology Teacher 80": 501–519. doi:10.1525/abt.2018.80.7.501. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. Hardy NW, CR Hardy. 2016. NatureAtlas.org: exposing undergraduate computer science students to opportunities and applications in biodiversity informatics. 2016 World Congress on Engineering 1 (PDF). pp. 209–211. ISBN 978-988-19253-0-5. .


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