Guest blog by Emma Bonzo
From California to digitising the Museum’s pollen collection, read about Emma Bonzo’s internship with the Museum’s Digitsation team.
Continue reading “Digitising Pollen: A Museum Studies Placement | Digital Collections”Bats about Data
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”Addressing planetary challenges with open data
At the Natural History Museum, London, we provide global open access by default and share our digital collections data on the Museum’s Data Portal.
Continue reading “Addressing planetary challenges with open data”Unlocking UK natural science collections | Digital Collections Programme
A Guest Blog by Ella Howes
The UK’s museums and botanical gardens hold exceptional and diverse natural sciences collections ranging from mites to meteorites. The estimated size of this national collection is over 150 million objects. Continue reading “Unlocking UK natural science collections | Digital Collections Programme”
Playing Top Trumps for Water Quality Month | Digital Collections Programme
We are currently digitising 75,000 freshwater insects belonging to three small orders. The presence of these groups can give us an idea about the water quality of the river they live in. As August is #WaterQualityMonth we thought this would be a great time shed some light on these orders of insects that you might not have heard much about before.
Continue reading “Playing Top Trumps for Water Quality Month | Digital Collections Programme”
Data in action: museum collections provide evidence for protecting rainforests | Digital Collections Programme
In this blog, we’re looking at a recent paper that cited some of our data in investigating the conservation potential of protected areas of rainforest using data on the Woolly monkey (Lagothrix lagothricha).
Continue reading “Data in action: museum collections provide evidence for protecting rainforests | Digital Collections Programme”Digitisation on demand: riverflies and redlists | Digital Collections
A guest blog by Robyn Crowther
Ephemeroptera (mayflies), Plecoptera (stoneflies) and Trichoptera (caddisflies) – or EPT for short – are three orders of insects found in freshwater systems across the world. These three key groups are important bioindicators, meaning that their presence and the size of their populations can give us an idea about the health of a freshwater habitat. There are approximately 89,000 specimens in the Museum’s EPT collection, and the Digital Collections Programme (DCP) are in the process of digitising them. Mobilising this data will aid research being undertaken by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), to further our understanding of EPT distribution and assess these species’ vulnerability to extinction.
Continue reading “Digitisation on demand: riverflies and redlists | Digital Collections”The Data Portal grows up | Digital Collections Programme
How latest upgrades mean that the Portal finally comes out of beta Continue reading “The Data Portal grows up | Digital Collections Programme”
Who uses collection data? | Digital Collections Programme
There is an incredible amount of specimen data providing critical information on the natural world, but with less than 10% of the estimated 1.5 billion specimens digitally accessible, who is using this information? Continue reading “Who uses collection data? | Digital Collections Programme”
A kaleidoscope of beautiful birdwings
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.