scholarly journals Virtual Equivalents of Real Objects (VEROs): A type of non-fungible token (NFT) that can help fund the 3D digitization of natural history collections

Megataxa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
SAMUEL J. BOLTON ◽  
JOSEPH R. CORA
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
3D Model ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Substantial Proportion ◽  
Morphological Data ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Loss And Damage ◽  
Real Objects ◽  
3D Digitization

Describing a substantial proportion of the world’s species could be made much easier by the 3D digitization of collections, which would facilitate the dissemination of taxonomic information locked up in natural history museums. Three-dimensional imaging captures many characters and allows a lot of versatility in the way that morphological data is displayed and used (Wheeler et al. 2012; Faulwetter et al. 2013). Moreover, the loss and damage of valuable specimens, many of which are very fragile, can be reduced as a result of the use and sharing of 3D model substitutes among researchers. This can also lead to a reduction in the handling and transportation expenses of many specimens.

scholarly journals DiSSCo as a New Regional Model for Scientific Collections in Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wouter Addink ◽  
Dimitrios Koureas ◽  
Ana Rubio
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Advisory Board ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Research Infrastructure ◽  
Morphological Data ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Scientific Collections

European Natural Science Collections (NSC) are part of the global natural and cultural capital and represent 80% of the world bio-and geo-diversity. Data derived from these collections underpin thousands of scholarly publications and official reports (used to support legislative and regulatory processes relating to health, food, security, sustainability and environmental change) and let to inventions and products that today play an important role in our bio-economy. In the last decades, the research practice in natural sciences changed dramatically. Advances in digital, genomic and information technologies enable natural science collections to provide new insights but also ask for changing the current operational and business models of individual collections held at local natural history museums and universities. A new business model that provides unified access to collection objects and all scientific data derived from them. Although aggregating infrastructures like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, GenBank and Catalogue of Life now successfully aggregate data on specific data classes, the landscape remains fragmented with limited capacity to bring together this information in a systematic and robust manner and with scattered access to the physical objects. The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) represents a pan-European initiative, and the largest ever agreement of natural science museums, to jointly address the fragmentation of European collections. DiSSCo is unifying European natural science collections into a coherent new research infrastructure, able to provide bio- and geo-diversity data at the scale, form and precision required by a multi-disciplinary user base in science. DiSSCo is harmonising digitisation, curation and publication processes and workflows across the scientific collections in Europe and enables linking of occurrence, genomic, chemical and morphological data classes as well as publications and experts to the physical object. In this paper we will present the socio-cultural and governance aspects of this research infrastructure. DiSSCo is receiving political support from 11 countries in Europe and will gradually change its funding model from institutional to national funding, with temporary funding from the EC to support the preparation and development. Solutions to achieve large scale digitisation are currently designed in the EC funded ICEDIG project to underpin the future large scale digitisation carried out by the countries. Unified virtual (digitisation on demand) and transnational physical access to the collections is over the next four years being developed in the EC funded SYNTHESYS+ project. The governance of DiSSCo is designed to gradually change from a steering committee composed of a few large natural history museums contributing in cash to initiate the development into a legal entity in which national consortia are represented, with a central coordination office for daily management. Each country individually decides how its entities (scientific collection facilities, research councils, governmental bodies) are organised in their national consortium. A stakeholder and user forum, Scientific Advisory Board and International Advisory Board will ensure that DiSSCo will be functional in enabling science across disciplines and within the international landscape of infrastructures. Training and short scientific missions are being developed in the MOBILISE COST Action to build capacity in FAIR data production, publication and usage of scientific collection-derived data in Europe and to initiate the socio-cultural changes needed in the collection-holding institutes. A Helpdesk is being constructed in the SYNTHESYS+ and DiSSCo Prepare projects to further facilitate the use and scientific use cases have been collected in ICEDIG to develop and facilitate e-services tailored to scientific needs.

Fund natural-history museums, not de-extinction

Nature ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 598 (7879) ◽  
pp. 32-32
Author(s):  
Corrie S. Moreau ◽  
Jessica L. Ware
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
History Museums

scholarly journals The Global Museum: natural history collections and the future of evolutionary science and public education

PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e8225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Freek T. Bakker ◽  
Alexandre Antonelli ◽  
Julia A. Clarke ◽  
Joseph A. Cook ◽  
Scott V. Edwards ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Educational Innovation ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Long Term Storage ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Natural History Collections ◽  
Museum Data

Natural history museums are unique spaces for interdisciplinary research and educational innovation. Through extensive exhibits and public programming and by hosting rich communities of amateurs, students, and researchers at all stages of their careers, they can provide a place-based window to focus on integration of science and discovery, as well as a locus for community engagement. At the same time, like a synthesis radio telescope, when joined together through emerging digital resources, the global community of museums (the ‘Global Museum’) is more than the sum of its parts, allowing insights and answers to diverse biological, environmental, and societal questions at the global scale, across eons of time, and spanning vast diversity across the Tree of Life. We argue that, whereas natural history collections and museums began with a focus on describing the diversity and peculiarities of species on Earth, they are now increasingly leveraged in new ways that significantly expand their impact and relevance. These new directions include the possibility to ask new, often interdisciplinary questions in basic and applied science, such as in biomimetic design, and by contributing to solutions to climate change, global health and food security challenges. As institutions, they have long been incubators for cutting-edge research in biology while simultaneously providing core infrastructure for research on present and future societal needs. Here we explore how the intersection between pressing issues in environmental and human health and rapid technological innovation have reinforced the relevance of museum collections. We do this by providing examples as food for thought for both the broader academic community and museum scientists on the evolving role of museums. We also identify challenges to the realization of the full potential of natural history collections and the Global Museum to science and society and discuss the critical need to grow these collections. We then focus on mapping and modelling of museum data (including place-based approaches and discovery), and explore the main projects, platforms and databases enabling this growth. Finally, we aim to improve relevant protocols for the long-term storage of specimens and tissues, ensuring proper connection with tomorrow’s technologies and hence further increasing the relevance of natural history museums.

scholarly journals NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS

2021 ◽  
pp. 24-28
Author(s):  
Dimítri De Araújo Costa ◽  
Nuno Gomes ◽  
Harold Cantallo ◽  
Carlos Antunes
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Scientific Culture ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Type Specimens ◽  
Local Fauna ◽  
History Museums ◽  
The World ◽  
Object Of Study

Society in general is distant from scientific culture, it is required to bring scientific knowledge closer to the population. In this context, an effective and attractive way for scientific dissemination is the establishment of natural history museums, which are institutions of knowledge, displaying the past. Natural history museums have the natural world as their object of study; and their collections may contain the most diverse types of materials (local and/or from various parts of the world), such as zoological, botanical, geological, archaeological, among others. Scientific collections are the largest and most important source of authoritative biodiversity data, contributing to studies of biodiversity composition, evolutionary (morphological and genetic), biogeographical, phenological, as well as geological. The materials present in these collections may serve for temporal comparison, being useful to produce predictive models. Likewise, they have a fundamental role in safeguarding type specimens, i.e. the first organisms identified to describe and name a new species. In addition, there is the component available to visitors in general, in order to raise public awareness on the preservation of the local fauna and flora and of other places in the world. In this way, the museums serve both the academic-scientific public and visitors who come to these sites for recreational purposes. It is intended to promote, in Vila Nova de Cerveira, the Natural History Museum of the Iberian Peninsula - NatMIP (“Museu de História Natural da Península Ibérica”), which intends to collect materials for scientific purposes, mainly Iberian.

scholarly journals Gender, Museums and Science: Wanda Hanke’s Ethnological Collections (1933–1958)

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana M. O. Sombrio
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
South America ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Extensive Data ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
Medicine And Philosophy ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Female Scientists

Abstract This paper will explore the significance of the expeditions under- taken by Wanda Hanke (1893-1958) in South America, of the networks she established in the region, as well as of her contributions to ethnological studies, in particular her compilation of extensive data and collections. Through Hanke's experience, it is possible to elucidate aspects of the history of ethnology and that of the history of museums in Brazil, as well as to emphasize the status of female participation in these areas. Wanda Hanke spent 25 years of her life studying the indigenous groups of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay and collecting ethnological objects for natural history museums. Trained in medicine and philosophy, she began to dedicate herself to ethnological studies in her forties, and she travelled alone, an uncommon characteristic among female scientists in the 1940s, in Brazil.

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