The UK government recently announced a £155 million (approximately $200 million) funding over 10 years, starting from 2026, for the digitization of most of the natural history collections at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London.
According to Science magazine, many museums globally are striving to digitize their collections, aiming to make them easily accessible and understandable to everyone. Previously, specimens like ancient rocks and fossils, plants, and insect specimens lay dormant in drawers of research institutions or museum cabinets around the world, potentially holding answers to questions about how the planet formed, how life evolved and interacted, among others. However, genuine insights can only emerge when researchers worldwide have access to them.
"This action will have a huge impact given the capabilities of the NHM," said Gil Nelson, a scientist at the University of Florida, who oversees the operation of a platform digitizing biological specimens in the United States. The database of this platform contains information from nearly 140 million specimens from various parts of the United States.
Helen Hardy, responsible for the NHM's digitization efforts, expressed being "super excited" about the UK Research and Innovation's commitment to funding. In 2021, an analysis by her and other UK researchers laid the groundwork for this national funding for digitizing collections. Hardy and her colleagues estimated that digitizing national collections over the next 30 years could save £2 billion for conservation efforts, invasive species control, crop and drug development, and mining.
"We've provided 'compelling reasons' for spending this digitization money," Hardy said.
The UK government has tasked NHM with using this funding to digitize its own collections while assisting around 90 other UK institutions in digitizing approximately 137 million items in total. NHM aims to record all details on specimen labels digitally, such as collection time and location, species names, and other identification details, at least as thoroughly as institutions elsewhere in the world. Plants are the easiest specimens to digitize since they are typically pressed onto paper with clear labels, making them suitable for conveyor belt-style photography. However, digitizing insect specimens poses significant challenges as each insect needs to be detached to digitize the label beneath it.
Furthermore, NHM researchers hope the digitized content will include detailed digital images of specimens and eventually be expanded with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) programs to link biological specimens with details of their habitats and ecosystems using AI algorithms.
