We’ll hear from Dominic Naughton, Digital Asset Coordinator of the Library and Archives section of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, on the nuts and bolts of digitising the vast collection of Herbarium and Fungarium specimens. A four-year project plan, part funded by DEFRA, sees the whole collection integrated with the new Collections Management System and will ensure that the entire collection is both visible and available on a global online resource.
Preserving such important information – the granular details of which is vital to help tackle critical global challenges such as biodiversity loss and climate change – is a hugely exciting project for the Royal Botanic Gardens. Dominic will share the challenges in:
- The overall project aims
- Software and hardware requirements for a project of this scale
- The move to internal backup and preservation of the collection
- Issues with connecting to multiple scientific databases and an Integrated Collections Management System (ICMS)
- Considerations for a DAM with both a historic biocollection and a cultural heritage collection
- The digitisation of the illustrations (200,000+ prints and drawings) in the library collections to make these available to a wider audience
