The University of Florida Herbarium in the Florida Museum of Natural History has opportunities for student internship and volunteer projects.

Our program is managed as part of the Florida Museum’s Volunteer program. Volunteers should complete the volunteer application form available on the Adult Volunteer Orientation Registration page. The Museum offers a volunteer orientation for those interested in a complete overview of the volunteer program.

The Herbarium has a variety of activities available that may provide training and experience in botanical collections work. Our web document Herbaria and Herbarium Specimens provides an overview of herbarium-related activities. If you would like to see our facilities and work space or have questions, please contact the collection manager.

Synoptic Collection

• Review/reorganize the collection, update the database of the collection, assess unmounted materials for potential inclusion, prepare labels and specimens for addition.
• Collect and prepare specimens for addition to the synoptic collection.

Vascular Plant Collection

• Prepare pressed specimens for addition to the collection. Our specimen preparation guide provides step-by-step details.
• Organize and prepare labels for backlog sets of specimens. Labels are prepared with the in-house software program PLabel or mail merge.
• Renovate areas in the collection to bring the specimens in a genus or family up to current taxonomic nomenclature and refolder specimens. This will involve research on a variety of web sites and with the literature in the herbarium library.
• Repair specimens that are mounted on non-archival materials.
• Add barcodes to specimens in the collection. This work may be in tandem with collection digitization (see below).

Bryophyte and Lichen Collection

• Proofread and correct records in our bryophyte and lichen databases.
• Organize and prepare labels for backlog sets of specimens.
• Repair specimens that are mounted on non-archival materials.
• Renovate areas in the collection to bring the specimens up to current taxonomic nomenclature. This will include work with the large number of historical collections that are in the collection.
• Bryophyte label treasure hunt: look for matching specimen in the collection that matches the data on bagged exchange material, photocopy an adequate number of labels for the duplicate material, and organize into sets for distribution as exchange.
• Process and digitize Dana Griffin’s backlogged packeted collections: mount packet on card, add barcode and record accession number in catalog, image specimen and catalog in the bryophyte or lichen portal.

Wood Collection

• Computerize the card file and update nomenclature for the specimens. * We already have someone working on this, but someone is needed to match samples with the collection (below).
• Match wood samples with vouchered specimens in the vascular plant collection.

Herbarium Library

• Catalog literature not presently in our electronic catalog.

Herbarium Illustration Collection

• Organize, catalog, image, update nomenclature, and database the herbarium’s collection of botanical illustrations.

Collection Databasing, Imaging and Web Site

• Database specimens of select groups in the collection.
• Catalog specimens from the images posted via NotesFromNature.org or in the SERNEC portal.
• Geolocate specimens in our collection database. The UF Campus flora set is a priority.
• Image select groups of specimens in our collection.
• Organize the Margaret Stone Gesneriaceae slide collection images and cross-reference those images with specimens in the collection. These slides are of photogenic plants in the African violet family. The cross-referenced images will be posted in the image gallery on our web site.