In an effort to reduce the chance of deception and misuse of access privileges to TORCH images on TACC, I'm recommending a new process for access approval to include initiation or confirmation by a known contact at a collection. This process will follow the steps of new account creation for students/staff/volunteers/etc. who need access to upload, manage, and delete files within your collection's directories on TACC within the TORCH project. This change was discussed in today's TORCH meeting and the following reflects my attempt to capture the intended process. The document for this process (among others) is at https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://docs.google.com/document/d/18xqde3W0FMJmBD8ERWt7N7sWGvaigl0gEQITNbUgrOc/edit?tab=t.0__;!!GNU8KkXDZlD12Q!-b7WIEq5OLeJtCVbv7OybSBNm3M1m2tAGOnDAkJMu3A2gQmyA3o0VAX9j2exev7oa-2jIXMWxbYZCXk$ [docs[.]google[.]com]
This seems like a sensible and efficient process to me. I don’t foresee any issues.
Mark
From: Texas-Oklahoma Regional Consortium of Herbaria <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Jason Best <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wednesday, February 18, 2026 at 3:08 PM To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> Subject: New process for access to TORCH project on TACC
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Mark and Jason, let me know if I need to do anything to have access. I do use the portal when working on FloraOK projects, but I don’t edit or alter anything on the site. I’d let the curators know if there were any issues and doubt I even have that level of access.
This is great and very timely. I have a research intern working in the herbarium this semester and want him to have access to TORCH. I've had him working under my login but it would be ideal to have him on his own for the reasons you mention.
I will have future interns/work studies in the herbarium who will also need access. Is it okay for me to have a single intern sign on/email address or should each student have their own account?
Rachel, Thank you! And as you mention, separate logins for each individual are ideal, especially when you want to scale up to multiple participants. From a security perspective, it's much better to have one account per person, especially when they may come and go on the project (and TACC requires this to comply with their terms of service) but also from a practical standpoint, it is difficult to use a shared two factor authentication among multiple individuals.
One thing that I am not sure if everyone realizes is that the new process refers to getting an account on TACC for uploading of images to the archive for those images to be linked to the Symbiota portal. It does not refer to the process of getting an account on the Symbiota portal for dealing with the database. If you aren't doing the imaging, making the derivative images of various sizes, and then uploading those images to TACC for linking to the Symbiota database, you can ignore this thread.
Jason Best and I plan to give a presentation next Wednesday, February 11th from 9 AM - 10 AM via Zoom on instructions for uploading herbarium specimen images to the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), generating derivatives and URLs, and linking them to Symbiota. This presentation will be recorded and shared along other documentation on the TORCH website.
The information below was originally shared in the Texas Plant Conservation Alliance (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.savetexasplants.org/__;!!GNU8KkXDZlD12Q!5XN-NES1iXqg4OP3huj765UlZ-2nUsfHVi0DLyYnjNZUa-QjzdTF9kNjo9cRDzlOMb06tYuB21KoO9Od50w$ [savetexasplants[.]org]) listserv.
Our Native Plant Society of Texas prioritizes education in pursuit of better understanding our native (Texas) flora, so please share the following with any of your undergraduate students who qualify. Two scholarships are available, and the application window is open Feb 1- March 15, 2026. From https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.npsot.org/our-work/grants-scholarships/scholarships/__;!!GNU8KkXDZlD12Q!5XN-NES1iXqg4OP3huj765UlZ-2nUsfHVi0DLyYnjNZUa-QjzdTF9kNjo9cRDzlOMb06tYuB21Ko2yd9k64$ [npsot[.]org]: "The Native Plant Society of Texas offers two scholarships for undergraduates at Texas colleges who major in biology, ecology, botany, landscape architecture, horticulture or related fields and who will be juniors or seniors in the fall of
