Digitising biodiversity

There have been talks and discussion among the researchers in Malaysian biodiversity about putting biodiversity databases in web-based digitised meta-data for the consumption of researchers and the public at large. This honourable effort is great if we think Malaysian public should at least understand our rich biodiversity and the environment. I view this phenomenon in two categories.
1. Public education. The school children, students and the educated public have the right to understand the diverse flora and fauna that inhabit this land of ours. They want to know their names, habitats and conservation value. They want to know how many types or species are there in our country. What is their range of distribution, etc
2. Researchers. Graduate students in particular want to know the community diversity, their interaction in the wild, their use etc. The taxonomic composition and their genetic make-up etc.
They want to view their holotypes or lectotypes, they want to know their phylogenetic relationships, they want to know their past distribution, etc.
I was told SING had digitised the type specimens in its holding, just like Kew or Leiden. FRIM has got their holdings in BRAHMS format when they embarked on the Flora of Peninsular Malaysia project, UKM has started to follow suit with our holdings so that public at large can view what we have in our reference collection. In fact this is one of the plan of action under the National Biodiversity Policy.