La mise en base de données de matériaux de recherche en botanique et en écologie

Abstract

One of the most remarkable developments in science over the past thirty years has been the development of large databases that act as new supports for the production, representation and juxtaposition of knowledge and information. This article examines the chains of instruments and devices involved in the material configuration of databases and their consequences for modes of knowledge production in two different contexts. In the first case, we describe the work required to digitize sets of plant specimens from herbaria in order to construct a transnational plant science database. In the other, we describe the work of documenting plankton specimens for an ecological database. We analyze the consequences of databasing in terms of what it means to document data, the distributed nature of database production, the evolution of the status of data itself and issues that databasing raises in terms of the importance of respecting procedure and the fragility of infrastructures. Our analyses lead us to consider databases not as an end in and of themselves, but as elements that, through their material form and the ordering possibilities they suggest, are endowed with a certain agency. In this sense, the database acts helps organize scientific work.

Keywords

• materiality
• infrastructure
• database
• ecology
• botany
• scientific work