GOAL 1. Develop a business plan that will provide long-term funding for databasing and digitization of the collections in the network, and determine the best appropriate use of shared technical expertise (estimated cost: $10,000,000 to completely database the collections of plants, fungi, bryophytes, and algae in the Southeast). This would include workshops on grantwriting and funding opportunities, as well as collaborative grantseeking and resource-sharing.
GOAL 2. Develop a digital library, a “virtual herbarium,” which will include a database of collection label data, specimen images and live plant images. The following tasks will be completed:

1. Provide a web presence for SERNEC and, where appropriate affiliate herbaria or groups of herbaria.
2. Assess the technical needs of individual herbaria and identify barriers that currently impede progress in databasing and digitization.
3. Develop and promulgate best practices and community standards for databasing and digitization of collections.
4. Expose metadata from at least 50 network herbaria through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) (http://www.gbif.org/).
5. Facilitate the georeferencing of specimen localities (using GEOLOCATE).
6. Make distribution maps available online for all taxa.
7. Make images of live plants or herbarium specimens available online for each species found in each state.
8. Maintain the ongoing development of best practices in terms of curation, databasing, digitization, and research.

GOAL 3. Increase the scope and diversity of SERNEC. This effort will be focused at the state level, as we determine the strengths and needs of the various institutions within each state.

1. Recruit curators that are not yet involved in SERNEC and The Society of Herbarium Curators (SHC).
2. Determine chain-of-command for those collections that do not have curators, encourage their involvement, and offer technical expertise.
3. Use the expertise of the curators at Delaware State University, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), and the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, a historically Native American college, to develop a regional plan to include institutions with large minority populations into the network.
4. Through state-level workshops, identify expertise that can be shared by curators within the state and region with scientists at HBCUs and at other institutions with large minority student populations in the Southeast.
5. Develop collaborations and educational opportunities to reach minority students and encourage their participation in botanically-based research.

GOAL 4. Make a database of botanical expertise available on a state-by-state level and for the entire region. The following tasks will be completed:

1. Categorize the expertise by taxonomic categories and by scientific methodology (morphology, molecular, ecological, phylogenetic, etc).
2. Organize state, physiographic and taxonomic working groups to develop research questions.
3. Develop a plan for a database of “gray literature” of technical reports and other unpublished data that have been generated by the scientists, searchable by taxon, region, or type of study.
4. Use the individual herbaria to seek local expertise in community colleges, corporations, K-12 schools, and agencies that could be included in the network.
5. Develop collaborations with state and federal parks, state and federal forests, state natural heritage programs, and The Nature Conservancy to make them aware of available expertise and assist in the curation and databasing of collections held by these groups.

GOAL 5. Evaluate strategies for disseminating information within the network and to the general public. Emphasis will be on region-wide initiatives, or programs that can be easily replicated state-by-state.

1. Provide state-by-state meetings of curators to discuss strengths, weaknesses, needs, and methods to generate collaboration.
2. Publish online teaching aids for K-12. These would include botany studies that are grade-specific and that make use of the database information in an inquiry-based approach.
3. Develop a series of state-level workshops to introduce teachers to the available resources and highlight case studies of their use.
4. Develop a series of state-level workshops to provide training in various technical aspects of systematics and taxonomy, such as Poaceae, Cyperaceae, and Asteraceae identification classes.
5. Interface with the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) to make this information available on a broader scale.
6. Provide information for state groups of wildflower societies and garden clubs about available resources and expertise.

GOAL 6. Determine ways to make botanical information in the Southeast accessible to all. This would include the following issues:

1. Determine how to integrate the ongoing All Taxa Biotic Inventory (ATBI) projects into the network.
2. Determine how to integrate botanical gardens into the network.
3. Determine how best to integrate the network into the broader community of collections and into the broader community of taxonomic groups.
4. Integrate this effort with American Society of Plant Taxonomists (ASPT).
5. Integrate with Index Herbariorum.
6. Determine how best to Integrate with National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and the National BiologicalInformation Infrastructure (NBII).