Natural history collections: A call for national information infrastructure

Abstract

Natural history collections are essential to biodiversity research, as they are the fundamental underpinnings of all biological information. Converting these data sets in electronic format and digitizing the specimens would provide easy access to valuable baseline information. While collections and museums from the developed world have initiated such work for the last few years, those from the developing and under-developed parts of our globe are lagging behind. This article, while emphasizing the need for such initiatives, describes SAMPADA, a software developed for automating a repository of collections and digitizing specimens. We further propose a model for developing a 'National Natural History Management Information Infrastructure' to ensure digitization, automation of Indian biological collections and their dissemination to the user community.