October 23 – 29, 2017 is International Open Access Week and on this tenth anniversary of the event, institutions have been asked to discuss the benefits of making data openly accessible.
Vince Smith, Head of Diversity & Informatics, the Museum’s signatory for the International data accord
Natural history collections provide an enormous evidence base for scientific research on the natural world. We are working to digitise our collection and provide global, open access to this data via our Data Portal.
Tray of mayflies (Ephemeroptera) with bounding boxes from the Inselect programme
To digitise the collection we are developing digital capture flows that cater for a wide range of collection types. One of the applications we have developed is Inselect – a cross-platform, open source desktop PC application that automates the cropping of individual images of specimens from whole-drawer scans.
Deborah Paul presenting on the Global Biodiversity Information Facility
Ben Price and Douglas Russell blogged recently about presentations by Museum colleagues at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Protection of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) in Berlin, noting that delegates were passionate about the potential of digitisation to help us illustrate, research and understand our changing world. As well as presenting, we learned a lot from the other presenters and attendees, picking up some themes which are particularly relevant to our Digital Collections Programme (DCP).
Museum collections are rapidly evolving in response to new research questions, innovations in digitisation and molecular analysis, and major challenges for society. It’s essential that museums work together to ensure that new ideas are exchanged and collaboration strengthened to make development more rapid and effective.
Fluid-preserved collections in the Berlin natural history museum
The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) is an international society whose mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to society. The annual conference is one of the largest gatherings of museum professionals each year and it gives us museum and conservation folk an excellent opportunity to network and share the latest cutting-edge knowledge in our field.
