Blogs from the Natural History Museum
Inspiring a love of the natural world
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”
Laura Sivess, Research Assistant for the Darwin Tree of Life project, shares the experience of being on a Museum field trip.
The Natural History Museum (NHM) Darwin Tree of Life (DTOL) team recently returned from Millport, Scotland, where in just over four days we encountered over 150 species and took 266 tissue samples for whole genome sequencing!
Continue reading “The Museum at sea | Darwin Tree of Life”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”
This year I’m writing a diary entry each month for a typical week in the life of a Principal Curator at the Natural History Museum. In the June entry, I provide my fingerprint and quote for an art project, review our sectional documentation, review a paper on the Downton Gorge in Shropshire, put together a grant proposal and have a late night call out to mitigate a leak threatening the collections.
Continue reading “Curator of Micropalaeontology | Diary of a Principal Curator June 2021”
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”
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”
