Data Mobilisation

With more than 60 million specimens of animals, plants, fungi, rocks, soil samples and fossils, Switzerland’s museums, universities, and botanical gardens store a remarkable scientific and patrimonial national treasure.

One of SwissCollNet’s primary objectives is to unlock the full potential of this treasure. To this end, several key actions have been identified: enhancing knowledge exchange in collection management, improving specimen identification and taxonomic revisions, digitising collections on a national scale, harmonising data, and archiving it within internationally compatible infrastructures.

In pursuit of these goals, the Swiss natural history collections community has:

• Published a comprehensive handbook on natural history collections management,
• Conducted a nationwide inventory of Switzerland’s curated collections,
• Developed a national data infrastructure to standardise and aggregate specimen data and
• Made the data openly accessible on the SwissNatColl portal and in global information networks.