Kevin Church/BBC
Many specimens have scientific labels handwritten decades ago which can now be read more easily and digitally captured
There are over 35 million pinned insect specimens at the Natural History Museum alone - digitising these helps scientists track insect decline and monitor changing pest populations
Scanning the specimens is not a trivial process. Not only does each one need to be photographed, but the tiny labels containing important scientific information, often handwritten, sometimes centuries ago, also have to be recorded.
The team involved calculated that it would have taken hundreds of years to do this manually, but using robots and AI this process can now be done in a decade, according to Sarah Addezio, the DiSSCo UK's programme delivery director.
"What we're able to do now is connect and analyse that information at a scale that's unprecedented and has not been possible before."
One hundred museums, botanic gardens, universities and other organisations are involved in the project.
The specimens to go under the cameras will not be the big beasties: there are no whales or dinosaurs in the opening phase, which begins in Wales and Scotland.
Beetles, butterflies, moths, flies, pressed flowers and ferns will go first - the small, less glamorous material that actually hold the best record of how the country around them has changed.
In Cardiff, the team will scan around half a million insect and plant specimens, from large, showy butterflies down to flies you could lose on a fingertip, which turn out to be among the most sensitive indicators of a healthy landscape.
In Scotland, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and National Museums Scotland hold 13 million specimens between them, the UK's second-largest natural science collection.
Together with 50 smaller Scottish collections, the collections span from sea level to the tops of mountains - two centuries of change in the plants and insects of every kind of Scottish landscape.
Jenny Geroni, who is the head of Natural Sciences and Research at the Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales, said it will be a chance to showcase material from across the country.
"Each collection is unique. We have a lot of Welsh material that is not held anywhere else.
"By taking material from across the UK, it also allows us to build a good picture of what is going on across the whole country. And everyone adding their world collections will build a much stronger picture of what is going on elsewhere," Geroni told BBC News.
Kevin Church/BBC A close-up shows an aged herbarium sheet: a pressed plant specimen fixed to cream-coloured paper. On the right, delicate brown fern fronds spread across the page, their narrow leaflets arranged in neat, feather-like rows along branching stems. The plant is dry and flattened, but its fine structure remains clear. On the left and beneath the specimen are several old labels, filled with faded handwritten notes in black ink. Some writing appears to record the plant’s name, its location and the date it was collected, including “1769”. The paper is yellowed and slightly stained with age, giving the image a quiet archival atmosphere.Kevin Church/BBC
Britain's pressed plants and flowers collected over hundreds of years will form an important part of the new digital museum
Every specimen in a museum is a snapshot of the past.
A large part of natural history is the detective story of piecing these clues together from tens of millions of these jigsaw pieces to recreate a vivid and detailed picture of how our world has changed.
The new initiative will make that much easier by bringing millions of specimens together along with powerful AI tools to search the information.
Kevin Church/BBC In a bright scientific imaging laboratory, a man in a blue shirt sits at a long white workbench, leaning forward in concentration. He holds fine tweezers over a small object or specimen on the desk. To his left, a large computer monitor displays a photo-management or imaging program with tiny insect photographs and scientific images. Behind the work area, several digital cameras are mounted on stands around a brightly lit specimen box, connected by yellow cables. Clear plastic containers, small tools and a computer mouse sit on the bench. Tall vertical blinds admit daylight. At right stands a large white machine labelled “Axio Scan.Z1”, used for high-resolution imaging.Kevin Church/BBC
Dr Vince Smith said the digital museum will accelerate research into the natural world
Dr Vincent Smith, a research leader at the Natural History Museum in London, says it will "supercharge" research into the natural world.
"Natural history collections record long periods of change, often through really fundamental periods, such as the Industrial Revolution. Our collections chart those changes and so you can see what's happened before," he said.
And, crucially, he added "start to predict what's going to happen next".
By bringing together this large collection of specimens, researchers can refine their computer models of how the natural world will change in the future - studying how climate change and other development choices will impact species loss.
DiSSCo UK will also help scientists prepare for future challenges - by uploading more fossils and rock material it will aid research into minerals needed for green technology.
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