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Digitisation as archival intermediary: Quantifying and qualifying Greta B. Stevenson's mycological collector networks

Christopher Kreuzer,G. Ridley,N. Smith

Published 2026 in Plants, People, Planet

ABSTRACT

Mass digitisation of natural science collections and archives has increasingly become a priority for scientific heritage institutions. Here, we explore the potential of mass digitisation to improve our understanding of the nature and history of scientific collaboration. Focusing on mycologist Greta B. Stevenson (1911–1990)—a peripatetic researcher whose career alternated between Great Britain and New Zealand—we quantify and qualify the often‐transient nature of scientific networks and collaborations. Through this, we highlight the varied applications of digitised collections data beyond traditional scientific research and emphasise the need for digitisation programmes to shift towards ‘messy’ databases to facilitate these uses. The ongoing digitisation of natural history specimens provides opportunities not just for novel scientific research and discoveries but also for ‘big data’ approaches to the humanities. In particular, it allows for historians of science to build more comprehensive interaction networks of individuals engaged in natural history—including those from marginalised groups who have historically had their contributions and voices hidden. Using data primarily generated from digitisation programmes at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the New Zealand Fungarium – Te Kohinga Hekaheka o Aotearoa, in combination with published records and archival documents, we map the collector‐networks of one New Zealand mycologist Greta Barbara Stevenson (1911–1990). In doing so, we highlight her diverse network of collectors and collaborators—obscured by the separation of her collections into two temporally and geographically distinct herbaria—providing biographical information and exploring ways in which the collections inform our understanding of how amateur science functioned during the 20th century at both national and international scales. Finally, through comparing different digitisation practices and projects, we suggest how future projects might be conducted to better facilitate humanities‐focused research.

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