Bombay Natural History Society to come out with e-museum

 In a mega initiative, the Bombay Natural History Society  (BNHS) - which has a whopping 1,38,000 specimens of mammal, bird, bird egg, reptile, amphibian, fish and insects - is in the process of complete digitisation to make what would be the biggest e-museum website of its kind. 

The Mumbai-headquartered BNHS, which works at the pan-India level, has turned 140 this month. 

For the digitization project of the BNHS Natural History Collection, it has received funding from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) and City Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Ltd (CIDCO).

A dedicated team under the leadership of Dr Rahul Khot is executing the project. 

"Currently the digitization team has completed photo-documentation, photo-stacking, and cataloguing of bird egg specimens, type specimens of reptiles and amphibians as well as the type and rare specimens of mammals and birds,” states the BNHS annual report 2022-23.

Digitizing mammal, bird, bird egg, reptile, amphibian, fish, and insect specimens from the BNHS collection and collating associated metadata to bring it in the public domain as a research and educational tool. 

The project involves digitizing the collection by photo documentation, photo-stacking, post-processing, and cataloguing photographic data and metadata in a digital format for the e-museum website. 

A total of 5939 bird eggs of more than 393 species have been photographed. A total of 17,744 raw images have been taken and 2336 photo-stacks have been prepared from them. 

As many of 300 type specimens of reptiles (including holotypes and paratypes) of 87 species have also been photo- graphed and catalogued with over 10,200 images. All of these images have been stacked and processed for preparing image layouts for final representation. 

Over 510 type specimens including holotypes and paratypes belonging to 128 species have been photographed and catalogued with over 13,459 images. These images have been stacked and processed for preparing image layouts for final representation. All the type specimens have been photographed from multiple angles to provide detailed information of the morphology of the specimen. 

A total of 39 species and 93 specimens (70 birds and 23 mammals) were photographed. The team digitized 476 images for birds, mammal skins and skulls from 3-4 different aspects, ensuring to cover all significant morphological features. A total of 505 bird specimens of 285 species from the general collection, with over 7,000 raw images were prepared. The team also photographed 218 mammal specimens of 129 species from the general collection, with over 3700 raw images.We have prioritized speeding up the digitization process and we aim to incorporate a standard operating procedure for the digitization project. 

The geo-referencing component of the project will be updated using GBIF guidelines. Processed bird, bird egg, reptile, amphibian, and mammal images will be used to create image plates and layouts for final representation. This will be combined with the data from taxa catalogues for the final output to be uploaded. Species-specific pages will contain information on status, distribution, image profiles, among other features.