Whole-drawer imaging for digital management and curation of a large entomological collection

Abstract

Whole-drawer imaging is shown to be an effective tool for rapid digitisation of large insect collections. On-line, Whole-drawer images facilitate more effective collection management, virtual curation, and public engagement. The Whole-drawer imaging experience at the Australian National Insect Collection is discussed, with an explanation of workflow and examples of benefits.

The Natural History Production Line

“…Naturalis operates two of these devices; the other is used to scan entomology drawers containing pinned insects. (For details on SatScan, see Blagoderov et al [2012] and Mantle et al [2012]). The result is a 600Mb high-resolution overview image containing all 100 slides.…”

Towards web-based semantic enrichment of 3D insects

“…Mantle et al [2012] demonstrates some of the kinds of metadata kept on tiny cards along with specimens in a collection. It often includes date of collection, location collected and species name.…”

Whole-Drawer Imaging of Entomological Collections: Benefits, Limitations and Alternative Applications

“…It therefore requires the processing of a greater number of input images to achieve the same image size and resolution. Images created with the SatScan system provide a sufficient amount of morphological information for the remote identification of species (Mantle et al 2012) and the system is now being used not only in the Natural History Museum, but also in the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre (Leiden), the Museum für Naturkunde (Berlin) (Schurian personal communication) and the Australian National Insect Collection (Canberra) (Fisher 2013). A relatively similar system utilizing telecentric optics and a machine vision camera has also been recently discussed by D Raila (2013).…”