DiSSCo UK, the UK national node of the European DiSSCo Research Infrastructure, has been featured in an in-depth BBC report on the digitisation of natural history collections.
The BBC article, “Gold beetles to Darwin’s finds – the 70 million museum artefacts going online”, explores how artificial intelligence and robotics will be used to digitise millions of specimens held in collections across the United Kingdom.
Led by the Natural History Museum, DiSSCo UK brings together around 100 museums, botanic gardens, universities and other organisations. The initiative aims to make approximately 70 million animals, plants, fossils and rocks digitally accessible to researchers and the public.
Automated imaging and AI-assisted transcription will be used to photograph specimens and capture the scientific information contained in their labels, including handwritten records dating back centuries. These technologies are expected to reduce a digitisation process that could take hundreds of years if completed manually to approximately a decade.
Supporting research into environmental change
Natural history collections provide a physical record of how species, ecosystems and environments have changed over time.
Speaking to the BBC, Dr Vincent Smith, Research Leader at the Natural History Museum in London, said that the digital infrastructure could “supercharge research into the natural world”.
He explained that natural history collections document long periods of environmental change, including major transformations such as the Industrial Revolution. Making this information digitally accessible will help researchers understand what has happened in the past and improve their ability to anticipate future change.
By connecting information from collections across the UK, DiSSCo UK will support research into biodiversity loss, insect decline and the effects of climate and environmental change. The resulting data may also contribute to research on food security, conservation and the geological resources required for green technologies.
Connecting UK collections to a European infrastructure
DiSSCo UK is the UK national node of the wider European DiSSCo Research Infrastructure.
The European Distributed System of Scientific Collections aims to digitally connect natural science collections across Europe through shared standards, services and practices. Its objective is to make specimen data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable while enabling collections held by different institutions and countries to function as one connected European research resource.
DiSSCo UK will draw on the digital services developed by the European infrastructure, including specimen-level identifiers and data annotation tools. Its national digitisation programme therefore represents the UK’s contribution to the broader DiSSCo vision.
The BBC coverage provides valuable public visibility for DiSSCo UK and demonstrates the wider scientific and societal importance of making natural history collections accessible, connected and reusable.
Featured image credit: DiSSCo UK