How to Contribute Photographs to 

Co's Digital Flora of the Philippines

The pages that make up Co's Digital Flora of the Philippines are actually present on a non-academic, commercial server.  All plant photos that link from this site go to the PhytoImages server at Southern Illinois University. Thus, to contribute photos to this project means contributing also to PhytoImages.  To be scientifically useful, photos should have associated metadata, that is, information not available from looking at the photo itself.  The most important (and therefore the minimum) of these are the location where the photo was taken and the photographer.  Things such as the identity of the plant are useful but not required (particularly if the photo shows sufficient details for diagnosis).  The date the photo was taken is usually recorded as metadata by the digital camera.  

There are basically three types of contributors that we can envision:

A Few Photos (10 or less)

This type of contributor can simply email the photos, along with relevant metadata, to any of the web site authors (addresses HERE).  

A Large Collection (but not a curator)

This contributor has a large collection of photographs, but he/she does not have a lot of time to be involved in this Flora project or does not anticipate contributing many photos in the future. For this person, we recommend that the photos be placed in a folder and compressed (zipped).  That zipped folder can then be uploaded to any number of free hosting sites such as YouSendIt.com or Dropbox.  Please do not attempt to send such large files via email!  We will also work with such contributors to assemble the metadata associated with the photos.  We would prefer that the information be entered into an Excel spreadsheet; however, other formats for assembling these data could be used.

A Large Collection (curator)

This contributor has a large collection of photographs and he/she is interested in becoming directly involved in the Flora project.  This person would be a long-term contributor of photos (for at least a year) and would therefore be given curatorial privileges.  A curator will be granted access to PhytoImages (with a username and password) and will thus be able to upload any number of photos at any time and from any internet-connected computer worldwide.  Because of direct access to the photographic database, this person will be required to adhere to particular guidelines and protocols.  In short, this process involves placing the Excel file with the metadata into a folder with the photos.  That folder is zipped and then uploaded to PhytoImages through a simple user interface (web page).

Bear in mind that the rights to any contributed photographs remain with the photographer (see Copyright page HERE).

How You Can Support 

Co's Digital Flora of the Philippines

Co's Digital Flora of the Philippines is a Not-For-Profit operation, i.e. the authors of this web site do not wish to make money from their efforts.  Although the authors are providing their time and energy for free, there are actual costs associated with maintaining the Flora.  The PhytoImages server at SIUC is a Del computer with back-up hard drives, and this hardware does age and need to be replaced and/or updated with time.  The commercial server that contains the pages comprising the Flora requires fees to be paid for hosting and domain name registration.  For these reasons, we encourage anyone who wishes to provide monitary support for these efforts to contact one of the web site authors HERE.