Collections Digitization Projects in Natural History Museums: Learning from Mistakes

Unlike many other types of museums, the collections of natural history museums are vast. Holdings that number in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions are by no means unusual. However, there is also present and growing expectation that museums will make information about their collections available online and free-of-charge. Moreover, fulfilling this need is now seen as ‘business as usual’ by museum stakeholders despite the fact that dealing with virtual collections is a significant additional expense to operating budgets as well as one for which no additional financial provision has (usually) been made. In order to close this expectation vs. resources gap, some research funding bodies have, for many years now, supported various natural history museum collections infrastructure programmes whose purpose is to promote the virtualization of collections. While there have been many noteworthy successes in this area, it is clear that the provision of this sort of temporary, stop-gap funding cannot be maintained over the long-term. Museum collections are simply too large, and the infrastructure/personnel needs too great, to make the ideal of full virtualization under this model viable economically for any but the smallest cohort of natural history museums. However, there is an alternative, more inward focused support model that is available and that does have the potential for achieving the desired aim for the most valuable subset of these museums’ holdings. Although all museums have their share of ‘legacy’ as well as ‘local interest, ‘regional interest’ and ‘national interest’ collections, for the most part the collections of natural history museums are held to serve the needs of specific stakeholder constituencies in the education/training, academic research, and commercial sectors. Engagement with these sectors regarding their needs, their opportunities, their resources, and the outcomes of potential digitization projects can allow natural history museums to develop priorities for collections digitization projects that can either be funded internally to meet specific institutional/corporate goals, or externally — often in partnership with stakeholder groups — to accomplish some larger end. In The Natural History Museum (London) we have had direct and positive experiences with a broad range of such initiatives. This general an approach achieves true democratization of collections, emphasizes engagement and  collaboration, does so under a sustainable financial model, and can be undertaken by natural history museums of various sizes.