Herbarium data and herbaria as extended archives for humanities research

Herbaria house essential resources of value to disciplines across the university. Engagements with herbaria in the humanities often escape the attention of botanists and university leadership, despite their potential to attract more audiences and demonstrate the broader value of herbaria for their home institutions. This article describes recent developments in humanities research with herbaria and offers perspectives on ways to broaden the accessibility and utility of herbaria for humanities scholars, especially in the digital humanities. It thus explores how herbarium sheets, their labels, marginal notes, drawings, and photos constitute valuable forms of documentation for humanities research, especially in addressing colonial legacies and historical omissions. We conceptualize herbaria as “extended archives” that encompass multiple layers of documentation. The article focuses on digital remediation strategies, summarizing recent developments, and offering methodological considerations for making botanical archives more accessible to humanist researchers.