The Australian Museum is digitising its collections, including the historic and diverse Marine Invertebrate collection. Below the Museum explains how is opening up its treasure trove of specimens to the world and the discoveries we are making along the way – but first, two some questions that the digitising raises… 

 

Why are museums important?

In today’s uncertain times, museums can act as an anchor in the storm.

To those who aren’t as passionate about the power of museums as readers of this blog, it can often seem that such institutions are merely places where forgotten objects go to enjoy their final years.

But despite this, there’s a strong case to be made that the museum is more relevant today than it has ever been. From addressing key social issues to transforming how we see the future, the humble museum has the power to reflect and shape our society. Here are five reasons why we need museums now more than

Learning from the past

First and foremost, museums and galleries provide an insight into the history of humankind. And while no museum can claim to provide a complete picture, the lessons we can learn from past events, wonders and tragedies are priceless.

This is especially true in times of turmoil. Today, it’s impossible to ignore the escalating tensions between nations, between political parties and between different cultural groups. Instead of finding common ground it seems that issues of class, race, gender and environmentalism are becoming ever more polarised.

To help the public re-establish this common ground and learn to build bridges rather than breed division, many believe that museums have a role to play in giving us perspective – be it through intellectual exercises or merely holding up mistakes of the past as evidence of where such behaviour will lead us once more.

Last year, the Museum of Oxford launched its Queering Spires exhibition to celebrate the ‘hidden history’ of Oxford’s LGBTQIA+ community. Speaking at the time, co-founder of the project Richard Howlett said that Oxford has a “queer history to be proud of.”

For more on the question of “Why” see separate blog post.

why is digitising an important/ vital action to take

Preserving valuable, fragile, and deteriorating materials. … Increased access to unique cultural heritage materials has indeed been acknowledged as the major benefit of digitization (Cohen and Rosenzweig, 2006; Daigle, 2012; Smith, 1999).

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The Australian Museum houses over 21 million specimens and cultural objects – the majority of which are not on public display but are stored behind the scenes. Not only are these objects scientifically and culturally important, but also the data attached to them provides valuable context. This includes information on what the object is, where and when it was collected and who it was collected by. These data represent a rich biodiversity library that is used as a tool in a range of disciplines, including taxonomic classification, conservation research, evolutionary biology, biogeographical analysis and pest control. When digitising a specimen, the hard copy data (labels and registers) are transcribed onto the museum’s electronic database and combined with selected digital images (photographs or 3-D scans) of the objects. This information is then made publicly available – but there is more to this process, and the AM collections, than meets the eye.

 

Opening up the treasure trove

Creating a digital record of specimens enhances access to the collections, in a plethora of impactful and significant ways. Previously the ability to access and study many of the specimens and data was limited to on-site visits or through loans to scientists and researchers. Following digitisation, future external researchers, data analysts and citizen scientists will have greater access to both the specimen and the related data 24/7. Furthermore, it will future-proof the collections by reducing the need to handle the objects as frequently, resulting in reduced wear and tear.

For almost two centuries the AM has been acquiring specimens, which has resulted in a backlog of unregistered material. Excitingly we have already uncovered specimens of species that are poorly known and represent new distribution records, adding to the understanding of their biology.

Digitising life under the sea

Registers cataloguing the Marine Invertebrate collection date from 1883. It is one of the most diverse zoological collections held in the AM. The collection covers a wide range of organisms including worms, crabs, lobsters, shrimp, prawns, corals, jellyfish, seastars, sea urchins and sponges, just to name a few! Specimens are kept in liquid preservative (usually ethanol or formalin) or dried. It is estimated that there are over 511,000 samples in the Marine Invertebrate collection, however, less than 50% have been fully documented.

Spongy discoveries

The sponges (scientific name, Porifera) were a recent group we tackled for digitisation (seen in the images below). Specimens preserved in ethanol can be rather smelly and exude a thick mucus, similar to that produced by Slimer from Ghostbusters! In life, this is a characteristic that sponges can combine with chemical defences to ward off predators. Last year we registered over 1500 sponge specimens. Additionally, working with a sponge specialist, Dr Merrick Ekins from the Queensland Museum, over 100 of these have been identified from the images, resulting in some interesting findings.

 

Five species, Suberea clavata (image below), Cinachyrella schulzei, Hicksonella expansa Coscinoderma nardorus and Clathria (Thalysias)virgultosa, were new records for the collection. The Suberea clavataspecimens are from New South Wales, an area where this species has been rarely documented from. One unregistered sponge specimen we discovered was collected in 1888 from Port Phillip, Victoria – a specimen that had been in the collection for 133 years! Already, this project has added to the breadth of the Museum’s collections available to study.

Next stop … brittle stars

The next group we are working on is the brittle stars (scientific name, Ophiuroidea). These are closely related to seastars, but as their name suggests they are very fragile. An additional challenge is their arms are often tangled up together like the game ‘Barrel of Monkeys’! As with the sponges, we are working with specialists to identify these specimens.