Democratizing Human and Natural History Science Through Virtualization

The key to making natural history collections relevant in the twenty-first century is the creation of virtual repositories with built –in analytical tools. While many museums are now making efforts in 3D visualization, virtual collections, and integrated database management presentations, we must take this further by putting entire collections online in a virtual repository. The goal of the Democratization of Science Project is to use 3D technologies to put entire collections, or entire museums, online so that any student, any child, any scientist, or any politician, anywhere, can do their own analyses. We see this as the future of museum repositories, and as a critical means to maintain the relevance of museum collections for the future. I suspect that important scientific and educational advancements are often not made simply because people do not have access to the collections. We hope to change this by democratizing access through virtualization, and we have developed the model for how this should be done and implemented the first examples.

 This required new developments in three areas. The first is in 3D virtualization and we are getting accuracy approaching +/- .005 mm, but we also developed new rendering techniques that bridge science and art without loss of accuracy or resolution. The second is in hyper-plastic database structures. This means that the database is so flexible that any type of data can be added without restructuring. In conjunction, we developed new techniques of database image storage. We serve over 40,000 high resolution images with real time resolution enhancement (resolution changes with zoom) while still maintaining integration with the database structure, and nearly 6,000 3D models. Third, these two structures are integrated with on screen measurement tools that allow the creation of multivariate datasets from any computer monitor. These measurement tools have been tested and shown to be accurate to .005 mm.

 The democratization of science is about using online media to make local, often inaccessible collections part of the world’s scientific agenda, and allowing distant, often isolated individuals, classrooms, or collaborators the opportunity to conduct their own investigations on museum collections from anywhere on the planet. This should be the museum model for the next century, and it will drive collections use, collection’s publication, and firmly establish and maintain the relevance of natural history museums as key sources of science and enlightenment.