Supporting Natural History Collections by Connecting Collections

Abstract

Information held in Libraries and Archives expands scientific knowledge by connecting specimens to rich data such as observations taken at the time of collection, species descriptions, and distribution records. Digitization of these resources transport them from the individual library and archives to the world. However, many of the primary resources are handwritten, limiting their use and reuse due to difficulties in deciphering cursive writing and a lack of machine readable data. This paper presents three case studies from the Harvard University Herbaria (HUH) Botany Libraries (HUH) and the Harvard University Ernst Mayr Library and Archives (EMLA) of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) that utilize crowd-sourcing, detailed access and discovery tools, and open access platforms to make handwritten materials more accessible to researchers as well as connecting content across collections held within and outside of Harvard University.