TY  - JOUR
JF  - Acarologia
T1  - Digitization of the Schuster Literature Collection. From archive to open science: indexing and accessibility of historically valuable acarological literature
VL  - 66
IS  - 3
SP  - 698
EP  - 704
PY  - 2026
SN  - 0044-586X
SN  - 2107-7207
PB  - Les Amis d'Acarologia
AU  - Kerschbaumer, Michaela
AU  - Baumann, Julia
AU  - Bodner, Michaela
AU  - Fröhlich, David
AU  - Schäffer, Sylvia
AU  - Pfingstl, Tobias
UR  - https://doi.org/10.24349/kki4-ccx2
DO  - 10.24349/kki4-ccx2
DA  - 2026-07-21
ET  - 2026-07-21
KW  - Acari
KW  - Oribatida
KW  - Document AI
KW  - taxonomy
KW  - biodiversity informatics
AB  - Historical taxonomic literature remains fundamental to acarological research, yet much of it is accessible only through analogue collections. The Schuster Literature Collection, compiled over several decades at the University of Graz, documents more than 6,000 publications on Acari spanning the years 1803-2011, with a strong emphasis on Oribatida. In the present work, the analogue card index representing this collection was digitized to create a structured bibliographic dataset. Standardized index cards were scanned and processed using a custom-trained document analysis workflow, followed by metadata harmonization and validation. The resulting dataset comprises 6,318 validated records and enables, for the first time, systematic quantitative evaluation of thematic, temporal and taxonomic trends within the archive. While the publications themselves remain in physical form, the digitized metadata provide transparent and searchable access to the collection’s contents and establish a foundation for future digitization and integration into biodiversity informatics infrastructures.
ER -