Digital collections programme
Programme summary
To digitise 80 million specimens from one of the world's most important natural history collections.
We are mobilising the world's natural history collections to help people and the planet thrive.
The Museum's Digital Collections Programme was initiated in 2014 to digitise and release data about the 80 million items in our collection.
Natural history collections holds information we need to tackle fundamental scientific and societal challenges of our time - from conserving the biodiversity on which our wellbeing and our planet's health depend to finding new waysto combat disease and extract mineral resources.
At present this information is contained within hundreds of millions of specimens, labels and archives across the globe, yet only available to a handful of scientists.
We want to unlock this treasure trove so that everyone, including citizen scientists, researchers and data analysts, can access it.
Programme awards
Digital Collections blog
With 80 million specimens to digitise, we have 80 million stories to share.
How do we digitise?
Digitising Lepidoptera of the British Isles: iCollections
We are digitising more than half a million British and Irish butterflies and moths, as a pilot for the digitisation of all pinned collections.
Digitising botanical collections: a pilot for an Open Herbarium
We successfully created digital images of 70,000 plant specimens stored on herbarium sheets using a conveyor-based workflow.
Digitising mesozoic collections
A pilot to digitise all British Mesozoic vertebrate specimens held at the Museum.
Microscope Slide Digitisation
The Museum has around 2.5 million microscope slides in its collections, which are either vertically or horizontally stored.
Pinned Insect Digitisation
The Museum has over 25 million pinned insects in the collection with extensive taxonomic and geographic information dating back over 300 years.
Digitising Darwin’s fossil mammals
A project to 3D surface scan some of Darwin's Fossils of mammals, including Toxodon and Megatherium.
Darwin's ground sloths
Charles Darwin collected four species of ground sloth on the second voyage of HMS Beagle, three of which were unknown to science.
What was Macrauchenia?
3D models of the first specimen of Macrauchenia patachonica known to science found by Charles Darwin are now available online.
Darwin's South American horse puzzle
Two specimens of Equus neogeus, horse teeth found by Charles Darwin on the Voyage of the Beagle (1831-1836), are now online.
Digital Collection
We are digitising 80 million specimens from our collections to an online data portal.
Diversity and informatics research
Researching undiscovered diversity using big data.
Collections
The Museum's 80 million specimens form the world's most important natural history collection.