A major international digitisation project will begin this summer which aims to create approximately 700,000 digital records of specimens held in Scotland’s natural science collections.
National Museums Scotland and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh will jointly lead the creation of a network to add Scotland to the Distributed System of Scientific Collections UK (DiSSCo UK) project, thanks to over £1.8 million in funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
The project in Scotland will initially run for two years and will see more than 250,000 insects from National Museums Scotland and 388,000 herbarium specimens from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh become digitally accessible to all. In addition, four further partners are already engaged in the project, namely Glasgow Life, The Hunterian, Shetland Museum & Archives and The James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, with more collecting institutions expected to be involved in due course.
Professor Olwen Grace, Deputy Director of Science (Collections), Curator of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Herbarium and project co-lead, said:
“This project brings together Scotland’s exceptionally rich natural science collections in a united effort to mobilise the biodiversity records they hold. Drawing on the leading Herbarium digitisation approaches at RBGE, the project will boost digital heritage in Scotland and help to ensure the broadest diversity of the UK’s collections are made accessible online. “
The Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is an exceptional collection of preserved specimens of the plant and fungal kingdoms used by researchers from around the world. From the flowering plants of coastal shores, moorland, and cities, to a tiny lichen from the brooding slopes of Ben Nevis, all specimens will be digitised.
Professor Grace added:
“DiSSCo UK presents an unequalled opportunity to reveal the British and Irish species in our collections. Digitising brings recent and historic records of the country’s biodiversity together in a new way, making important information available for looking after nature in future.”
Dr Nick Fraser, Keeper of Natural Sciences at the National Museums of Scotland and project co-lead, said:
“This is a really exciting undertaking. It will really activate collections which have been amassed across Scotland for over 200 years. Having these records digitally available will allow us to unlock the critical information that these collections hold about changes in biodiversity over time and the impact of climate change on diverse ecosystems both here in Scotland and across the world.”
Among the significant collections to be digitised is the Pelham-Clinton moth collection held at the National Museums Collection Centre in Edinburgh. Edward Pelham-Clinton spent decades travelling Britain and Ireland, collecting over 35,000 moths and butterflies, and filling 64 meticulous field diaries with observations on 2,169 species, building what is almost certainly the most detailed personal record of British moths ever compiled.
His collection and diaries, which contain around 250,000 entries in total, cover precisely the decades before moth populations began their dramatic modern decline, making them an irreplaceable before-and-after record of what Britain's moths looked like when they were still thriving.
Dr Fraser added:
“Unlocking the full power of this archive means digitising every page of those diaries and every specimen label. That means that anyone, anywhere, can ask what was flying in a Scottish meadow in the 1950s, and compare it to what is flying there now which, in some cases, may be very little due to expanded human inhabitation and activity”.
DiSSCo UK, is a £155 million, 10-year national programme to digitise and connect the UK's natural science collections. The programme is funded through the UKRI Infrastructure Fund and delivered by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in partnership with the Natural History Museum and over 100 partners across the UK.
AHRC Executive Chair Professor Christopher Smith said:
“For hundreds of years the UK has gathered and grown one of the world’s most comprehensive and diverse collections of scientific material in museums across the UK. It has been a long-held ambition to bring this collection together – and now this dream can come true.
“Over ten years, DiSSCo UK will deliver progress that would otherwise have taken over a century, including the creation of millions of newly digitised records and a network of around 100 collections from national museums and gardens, and universities to local collections that would never have had such access without it. And the outcomes of this £155m investment will offer exciting new opportunities for science as well as society.
“AHRC is proud to have led UKRI’s largest ever investment in the GLAM sector, yet another contribution to our leadership of the creative and cultural economy.”
In addition to material from the Scottish national collections, the project will also see digital records created for 85,000 plant specimens held by Glasgow Life, 1200 insects from The Hunterian, 2400 specimens from Shetland Museum & Archives including plants, algae and fungi as well as 1400 plant, lichen and moss specimens from The James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen. It is hoped that future phases will encompass more of the collections of existing participants and also widen in scope to include more of Scotland’s natural science collecting institutions.
Main image: Stereocaulon vesuvianum