Have a personal or library account? Click to login
Flora Batava (1800–1934): From Historical Citizen Science to Plant Humanities Dataset Cover

Flora Batava (1800–1934): From Historical Citizen Science to Plant Humanities Dataset

Open Access
|Jan 2026

Abstract

Flora Batava: people, plants, locations lists 11,500+ records of all species in the first illustrated flora of the Netherlands, published in 28 volumes between 1800 and 1934. The dataset includes information about the plants, the people who observed them in each locality, and the publication of each volume. KB, the National Library of the Netherlands holds both original and digitized source material. From the latter, data was segmented and extracted using a generative AI model (OpenAI’s GPT-4), then checked and corrected manually. Including social (e.g., observers’ names, sex) and historical information (e.g., old plant names, publication history), this dataset facilitates research in plant humanities, botanical heritage, and social history of science.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/johd.497 | Journal eISSN: 2059-481X
Language: English
Submitted on: Dec 8, 2025
|
Accepted on: Dec 18, 2025
|
Published on: Jan 9, 2026
Published by: Ubiquity Press
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

© 2026 Luiza Teixeira-Costa, Esther van Gelder, Laurens Sparrius, Folgert Karsdorp, published by Ubiquity Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.