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Darwin’s Cargoes |Digital Collections Programme

A guest blog by Prof Adrian Lister

Darwin aged 31, George Richamond via Wikimedia Commons
Map showing Darwin’s main overland excursions in South America.

HMS Beagle took Charles Darwin on his famous voyage of discovery from 1831-1836. Darwin collected thousands of specimens, many of which survive in the collections of the Museum, but how did these specimens make their way to the UK from remote locations around the world?

In this blog, marking Darwin’s first fossil discovery on 22nd September 1832, Prof Adrian Lister retraces the journey of Darwin’s Cargoes. Continue reading “Darwin’s Cargoes |Digital Collections Programme”

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Darwin Digitisation in 2020| Digital Collections Programme

Equus

A tooth from Equus, a wild horse collected by Charles Darwin in Argentina on 10/10/1833

In 2018 the Museum embarked on a pilot project to document and 3D surface scan 10% of the fossil mammals that Darwin collected on the Voyage of the Beagle. During this project we focused on 20 fossil mammal specimens to investigate the potential that digitisation holds for this collection. This was also the first time that researchers have fully documented, researched and conserved these historically significant specimens since many of them came over to the Museum from the Royal College of Surgeons during the second world war. The fossils included in this pilot were released onto the Museum’s Data Portal and uploaded to Sketchfab.com to share these new resources with as wide an audience as possible. Continue reading “Darwin Digitisation in 2020| Digital Collections Programme”

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Over half a decade of digitisation  | Digital Collections Programme

Award winning digitisation

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The Natural History Museum Digital Collections Programme has just received a lovely Christmas present! Following our November win as best Not for Profit project of the year in the UK IT Industry Awards, we’ve just been notified that we are also winners in the Culture and Tourism Category of the World Summit Awards. Continue reading “Over half a decade of digitisation  | Digital Collections Programme”

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Scaling Up Digitisation | Digital Collections Programme

A guest blog by Robyn Crowther

1) scale insects
Digitised microscope slides from the Museum’s Coccoidea collection

The Digital Collections Programme is digitising the Museum’s scale insect collection. This collection is estimated to contain 100,000 microscope slides, making it the biggest slide digitisation project we’ve undertaken so far. Continue reading “Scaling Up Digitisation | Digital Collections Programme”

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A kaleidoscope of beautiful birdwings

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We have completed digitising the Museum’s birdwing butterfly collection. Images of more than 8000 specimens have been released onto the Museum’s data portal for anyone in the world to access. This digitisation project has enabled us to gather accurate information about what we have within our collection and this new online resource will support conservation plans to protect endangered species for the future.

Continue reading “A kaleidoscope of beautiful birdwings”