The Natural History Museum (NHM), which has a vast collection comprising 80 million objects, is currently undertaking an ambitious programme to digitise up to a quarter of them.
Since 2014 the museum has been running a series of pilot digitisation projects, focusing on selected parts of the collection including butterflies and moths, plant specimens from the herbarium, and dinosaur fossils.
The records are made available through a searchable online portal. With some exceptions, they have open Creative Commons licences that allow the information to be reused with few or no copyright restrictions.
“Digital in general is one of the big strategic priority areas for the museum and mass digitisation of the collection is one of the key strands within that,” says Vincent Smith, the informatics research leader at NHM.
The museum’s work is a particularly ambitious example of the growth of digitisation within the museum sector. And institutions are increasingly creating digital records of parts of their collection and making them publicly available online.
While this presents new technical challenges, it also brings a wide range of potential benefits – most obviously, increasing access. This means museums can display far more content than would be possible in a physical exhibition, and people do not need to visit in person to reach it.
Smith says that researchers and curators are already reaping the benefits of the digitised collection. “We can service loan requests much more easily, and in some cases send a digital surrogate,” says Smith.
“For the botanical collection, there is the potential for digital loans to outpace our physical loans.”
The large datasets that result can also be subjected to analysis and visualisation to glean scientific insights. The digitised butterfly and moth specimens now provide data going back 100-150 years that sheds light on the effects of climate change.
“We can look at the impact of human-induced climate change by looking at how these butterflies shift in their distribution over time,” says Smith.
Another advantage of digitisation is that information can be shared between different institutions with related collections. The NHM’s data feeds into aggregators like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and specialist scientific databases.
The actual process of digitisation can range from fairly basic to highly sophisticated, depending on its purpose, and the NHM’s work encompasses a broad range of this spectrum.
Much of the process of digitising butterflies and moths is manual, and so far digital records have been created for 200,000 and 400,000 specimens respectively. In the majority of cases this process has been fine-tuned to take just over two minutes per specimen.
The museum’s insect specimens are stored on pins with information labels, within one of 150,000 drawers.
“You take the specimen out of the drawer, unfurl the labels, take a picture of the specimen with the labels, put the labels back and then put the specimen back in the drawer. We also transcribe some of the key information from the label,” Smith explains.
The specimens are then sent to another team for the more time-consuming process of geo-referencing, where a map location is added to the records.
Summing up the aim of the pilot project, Smith says: “Can we prove to ourselves that we can do it? Can we put the technical pipelines in place for digitisation? And can we get some useful data to exploit?”
Other parts of the museum’s digitisation work make use of more sophisticated imaging techniques. A blue whale skeleton, which is set to replace the famous diplodocus cast in the main hall and a stegosaurus fossil skeleton known as Sophie have both undergone 3D scanning.
The NHM has 3D scanning expertise in-house, but outsourced these projects and others, including the scanning of its herbarium specimens, which was done in conjunction with a specialist firm in the Netherlands. And many other museums have worked with technology partners, either on the process of digitisation or on exhibiting digital collections.
The British Museum collaborates with external partners on even the most complex digitisation work and has, for instance, worked with hospitals to create MRI scans of mummies.
And the possibilities for digitisation are rapidly expanding, says the British Museum’s head of digital and publishing Chris Michaels.
“We’re just at the beginning of a process that will evolve massively over the next 10, 20 or 30 years,” he explains. “And 20 years ago you couldn’t have imagined putting a mummy inside an MRI scanner in a hospital but that’s a fairly common thing now.”
“We have put mummified crocodiles through huge veterinary scanners designed for horses, and done work with Cern on subatomic photon scanning of papyrus scrolls,” Michaels adds.
But while digitisation brings clear advantages for researchers, making digital collections accessible to the public is somewhat less straightforward. The sheer scale of such projects can be overwhelming, and search-based interfaces are more suited to professionals who know what they are looking for rather than people with a less clearly defined interest.
Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums (Twam) has been experimenting with a new interface for accessing digital collections [link to public engagement feature], and a desire to increase public engagement lies behind the work of various institutions with the Google Cultural Institute.
The technical aspects of digitisation can also present challenges. IWM is undertaking a project to digitise 1,000 hours of its huge film archive, making it easier to respond to requests for footage from researchers, broadcasters and the public. David Walsh, the head of digital collections at IWM, says that the large size of video files adds to the scale of the task.
“Just digitising the material is only part of the challenge,” says Walsh. “You also have to have a very sophisticated IT structure underpinning everything, otherwise you end up with files locked on servers that are difficult to access.”.
But while large digitisation projects are likely to require specialist software and equipment, simpler ventures can be carried out with relatively few resources.
Sarah Brown, the outreach officer at the Collections Trust, says that a lack of confidence can hold back smaller museums from embarking on digitisation, and part of her work involves breaking down perceptions of difficulty. “It takes time and resources but it doesn’t have to be this massive undertaking,” she says.
Brown says that the necessary tools can be acquired inexpensively. “You can get a good digital camera for £400 and local universities can sometimes provide a tutor free or cheaply,” she explains.
The Collections Trust provides advice on digitisation on its website, and one strand of the current review of its Spectrum collections management standard is focusing on issues around digital asset management, such as ensuring terminology is used consistently.
Whether museums create a distinct digital strategy or integrate digital into their broader plans, the digitisation of collections should be related to wider institutional concerns, says Brown. “However museums develop digitisation, it should always be linked to the overall mission of the organisation,” she adds..
Although Smith believes that in hindsight the NHM’s original aim of digitising 20 million specimens within five years was too ambitious, the museum has not rowed back on making the digital collections programme a core part of its work.
“The actual numbers to some degree aren’t that important,” he says. “It’s really about how we culturally embed digitisation as part of our activities within the museum.”
Since 2014 the museum has been running a series of pilot digitisation projects, focusing on selected parts of the collection including butterflies and moths, plant specimens from the herbarium, and dinosaur fossils.
The records are made available through a searchable online portal. With some exceptions, they have open Creative Commons licences that allow the information to be reused with few or no copyright restrictions.
“Digital in general is one of the big strategic priority areas for the museum and mass digitisation of the collection is one of the key strands within that,” says Vincent Smith, the informatics research leader at NHM.
The museum’s work is a particularly ambitious example of the growth of digitisation within the museum sector. And institutions are increasingly creating digital records of parts of their collection and making them publicly available online.
While this presents new technical challenges, it also brings a wide range of potential benefits – most obviously, increasing access. This means museums can display far more content than would be possible in a physical exhibition, and people do not need to visit in person to reach it.
Smith says that researchers and curators are already reaping the benefits of the digitised collection. “We can service loan requests much more easily, and in some cases send a digital surrogate,” says Smith.
“For the botanical collection, there is the potential for digital loans to outpace our physical loans.”
The large datasets that result can also be subjected to analysis and visualisation to glean scientific insights. The digitised butterfly and moth specimens now provide data going back 100-150 years that sheds light on the effects of climate change.
“We can look at the impact of human-induced climate change by looking at how these butterflies shift in their distribution over time,” says Smith.
Another advantage of digitisation is that information can be shared between different institutions with related collections. The NHM’s data feeds into aggregators like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and specialist scientific databases.
The actual process of digitisation can range from fairly basic to highly sophisticated, depending on its purpose, and the NHM’s work encompasses a broad range of this spectrum.
Much of the process of digitising butterflies and moths is manual, and so far digital records have been created for 200,000 and 400,000 specimens respectively. In the majority of cases this process has been fine-tuned to take just over two minutes per specimen.
The museum’s insect specimens are stored on pins with information labels, within one of 150,000 drawers.
“You take the specimen out of the drawer, unfurl the labels, take a picture of the specimen with the labels, put the labels back and then put the specimen back in the drawer. We also transcribe some of the key information from the label,” Smith explains.
The specimens are then sent to another team for the more time-consuming process of geo-referencing, where a map location is added to the records.
Summing up the aim of the pilot project, Smith says: “Can we prove to ourselves that we can do it? Can we put the technical pipelines in place for digitisation? And can we get some useful data to exploit?”
Other parts of the museum’s digitisation work make use of more sophisticated imaging techniques. A blue whale skeleton, which is set to replace the famous diplodocus cast in the main hall and a stegosaurus fossil skeleton known as Sophie have both undergone 3D scanning.
The NHM has 3D scanning expertise in-house, but outsourced these projects and others, including the scanning of its herbarium specimens, which was done in conjunction with a specialist firm in the Netherlands. And many other museums have worked with technology partners, either on the process of digitisation or on exhibiting digital collections.
The British Museum collaborates with external partners on even the most complex digitisation work and has, for instance, worked with hospitals to create MRI scans of mummies.
And the possibilities for digitisation are rapidly expanding, says the British Museum’s head of digital and publishing Chris Michaels.
“We’re just at the beginning of a process that will evolve massively over the next 10, 20 or 30 years,” he explains. “And 20 years ago you couldn’t have imagined putting a mummy inside an MRI scanner in a hospital but that’s a fairly common thing now.”
“We have put mummified crocodiles through huge veterinary scanners designed for horses, and done work with Cern on subatomic photon scanning of papyrus scrolls,” Michaels adds.
But while digitisation brings clear advantages for researchers, making digital collections accessible to the public is somewhat less straightforward. The sheer scale of such projects can be overwhelming, and search-based interfaces are more suited to professionals who know what they are looking for rather than people with a less clearly defined interest.
Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums (Twam) has been experimenting with a new interface for accessing digital collections [link to public engagement feature], and a desire to increase public engagement lies behind the work of various institutions with the Google Cultural Institute.
The technical aspects of digitisation can also present challenges. IWM is undertaking a project to digitise 1,000 hours of its huge film archive, making it easier to respond to requests for footage from researchers, broadcasters and the public. David Walsh, the head of digital collections at IWM, says that the large size of video files adds to the scale of the task.
“Just digitising the material is only part of the challenge,” says Walsh. “You also have to have a very sophisticated IT structure underpinning everything, otherwise you end up with files locked on servers that are difficult to access.”.
But while large digitisation projects are likely to require specialist software and equipment, simpler ventures can be carried out with relatively few resources.
Sarah Brown, the outreach officer at the Collections Trust, says that a lack of confidence can hold back smaller museums from embarking on digitisation, and part of her work involves breaking down perceptions of difficulty. “It takes time and resources but it doesn’t have to be this massive undertaking,” she says.
Brown says that the necessary tools can be acquired inexpensively. “You can get a good digital camera for £400 and local universities can sometimes provide a tutor free or cheaply,” she explains.
The Collections Trust provides advice on digitisation on its website, and one strand of the current review of its Spectrum collections management standard is focusing on issues around digital asset management, such as ensuring terminology is used consistently.
Whether museums create a distinct digital strategy or integrate digital into their broader plans, the digitisation of collections should be related to wider institutional concerns, says Brown. “However museums develop digitisation, it should always be linked to the overall mission of the organisation,” she adds..
Although Smith believes that in hindsight the NHM’s original aim of digitising 20 million specimens within five years was too ambitious, the museum has not rowed back on making the digital collections programme a core part of its work.
“The actual numbers to some degree aren’t that important,” he says. “It’s really about how we culturally embed digitisation as part of our activities within the museum.”