Blogs from the Natural History Museum
Inspiring a love of the natural world
The UK holds some of the world’s most important natural science collections. More than 130 million specimens have been collected from around the world and are held in over 90 institutions throughout the country.
Continue reading “Releasing the power of UK collections | Digital Collections”
January 2023 marks the tenth anniversary since I first started digitising the Museum’s collections. A lot has changed in that time but the main principle of digitisation has remained the same: to transform the access and use of the Museum’s collections through unlocking natural history data and sharing this with the world.
Continue reading “A Decade of Digitisation | Digital Collections”
Scientists have found that flowering time in plants can advance as much as 3.6 days for every 1°C the climate warms, but why does this matter?
Continue reading “How are the world’s habitats changing as the Climate warms? | Digital Collections”
Our pinned mayfly, stonefly and caddisfly specimens are groups of insects that have life cycles reliant on freshwater. Where these insects are plentiful, they are fantastic indicators of water quality.
Continue reading “Setting our Freshwaterflies Free | Digital Collections”In my role as an assistant digitiser, I have been working to transcribe some of the Museum’s freshwater insects. Whilst looking at the labels of these specimens a pattern started to emerge around the types of data being recorded and I wanted to find out more.
Continue reading “Freshwater Insects UK vs the World | Digital Collections”
A brand new scientific paper applies computer vision to over 125,000 of the Museum’s digitised Butterfly collection to understand how animals may respond to climate change.
Continue reading “Data in Action: British butterflies body size changes in response to climate change | Digital Collections Programme”
This International Women’s Day, I want to celebrate the incredible achievements of Grace Mary Crowfoot, a botanist, textile archaeologist, anthropologist, and pioneering anti-FGM advocate and to share her story of breaking biases and fighting inequality for women.
Continue reading “Breaking the Bias with Grace Mary Crowfoot: Botanist, Archaeologist, and Advocate for Women’s Rights | Digital Collections Programme”
12th February 1832: There has been a little swell on the sea to day, & I have been very uncomfortable Charles Darwin’s diary entry on his birthday 190 years ago.
While on board the voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin recorded the journey and mentions notable days like Christmas day and New Year’s day, but although he records each year what he did on the 12th February, he never mentions that it was his birthday.
Continue reading “Celebrating new discoveries on Darwin Day 2022”
The UK holds hundreds of millions of natural history specimens of scientific importance. Exactly how many specimens and what those specimens are, is currently unknown. Unveiling the contents of the UK’s collections will open the door to further digitisation and unlock the full scientific potential of UK natural science collections.
Digitising, the process of converting physical information into a digital form, the UK’s natural science collection, opens up a unique and valuable national resource to the world and enable the UK to be part of current and future scientific collaborations to find solutions to the biggest challenges of our time.
Continue reading “What’s in our UK natural science collections and why does this matter? | Digital Collections Programme”Nearly two years after the first case of COVID 19 we are still dealing with massive human health impacts and changes in our daily lives, but how can digitising bats help prevent future pandemics?
Continue reading “Bats about Data”