The Natural History Museum to collaborate on brand new digital project to virtually reunite Sir Hans Sloane’s collections

The Sloane Lab: Looking back to build future shared collections will work with expert and interested communities including museum audiences to link the present with the past to allow the connections between Sloane's collections and catalogues to be re-established across these national institutions plus others that have relevant material.

The main outcome of the project will be a freely available, online digital lab which will offer researchers, curators and the public new opportunities to search, explore, and engage critically with key questions about our digital cultural heritage.

Dr Mark Carine, a curator at the Natural History Museum, is one of the Co-Investigators in this project. He says: “The natural history specimens assembled by Sloane are the de facto foundation collection of the Natural History Museum. They are a collection of significant scientific value that are still widely consulted since they provide a unique source of information on the natural world, how it has changed and how we have interacted with it over the last 300 years.

“Information on Sloane’s natural history collections are already accessible to anyone using the Museum's  online database but this project will enable us to further open up Sloane’s vast collection of plant specimens and it will virtually bring back together his diverse collections that are now distributed across several institutions. Reconnecting Sloane’s collections will allow users to query those collections in new ways, it will allow us to better understand the historical context in which they were collected and help unlock new ways of using those collections today.”

The Project partners include: The British Museum, the Natural History Museum, the British Library, Historic Environment Scotland, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, National Museums of Scotland, Archives and Records Association, Down County Museum, National Galleries of Scotland, Oxford University Herbaria, Collecting the West project funded by the Australian Research Council & metaphacts. The Principal Investigator is Professor Julianne Nyhan, University College London and TU Darmstadt.

The Natural History Museum’s Sloane Herbarium

The Natural History Museum houses Sloane’s surviving natural history collections. The Sloane Herbarium which contains an estimated 120,000 plant specimens bound into 265 volumes is the largest surviving botanical collection from the late 1600s and early 1700s when Sloane was active and it contains plants collected in more than 70 countries and territories worldwide. Antarctica and Australasia are the only continents not represented. The first seven volumes include the specimens collected during Sloane's voyage to Jamaica (1687-1689). The volumes are preserved in a purpose-built special collections room.

The Museum is also home to collections of Sloane's other natural history specimens, books, manuscripts and correspondence. It includes his handwritten catalogues which give details of specimens now in the Museum's Life and Earth Science Departments. These 19 volumes note the origin of specimens now in the Museum's Botany, Entomology, Mineralogy, Palaeontology, and Zoology departments.

Towards a National Collection

The Sloane Lab is one of five new Discovery Projects funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of Towards a National Collection, a major five-year research and development programme that aims to underpin the creation of a unified virtual ‘national collection’, dissolving barriers between the different collections of the UK’s museums, archives, libraries and galleries. Towards a National Collection has been awarded £14.5m by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to transform online exploration of UK’s culture and heritage collections through harnessing innovative AI. The other projects include:

·         The Congruence Engine: Digital Tools for New Collections-Based Industrial Histories – which will create the prototype of a digital toolbox for everyone fascinated by our industrial past to connect an unprecedented range of items from the nation’s collection to tell the stories they want to tell.

·         Our Heritage, Our Stories: Linking and searching community-generated digital content to develop the people's national collection – which will dissolve existing barriers and develop scalable linking and discoverability for community-generated digital content, through co-designing and building sophisticated automated AI-based tools to discover and assess CGDC 'in the wild', in order to link it and make it searchable.

·         Transforming Collections: Reimagining Art, Nation and Heritage – which aims to enable cross-search of collections, surface patterns of bias, uncover hidden connections, and open up new interpretative frames and ‘potential histories’ of art, nation and heritage

·         Unpath'd Waters: Marine and Maritime Collections in the UK – which aims to reshape the future of UK marine heritage, making records accessible for the first time across all four UK nations and opening them to the world

The five ‘Discovery Projects’ will harness the potential of new technology to dissolve barriers between collections - opening up public access and facilitating research across a range of sources and stories held in different physical locations. One of the central aims is to empower and diversify audiences by involving them in the research and creating new ways for them to access and interact with collections. In addition to innovative online access, the projects will generate artist commissions, community fellowships, computer simulations, and travelling exhibitions. The investigation is the largest of its kind to be undertaken to date, anywhere in the world. It extends across the UK, involving 15 universities and 63 heritage collections and institutions of different scales, with over 120 individual researchers and collaborators.

Together, the Discovery Projects represent a vital step in the UK’s ambition to maintain leadership in cross-disciplinary research, both between different humanities disciplines and between the humanities and other fields. Towards a National Collection will set a global standard for other countries building their own collections, enhancing collaboration between the UK’s renowned heritage and national collections worldwide.

Contact:

For more information, or to connect with programme or project spokespeople, please contact:

·         Ellen Ffrench ellen.ffrench@flint-culture.com / +44 7805 934 24

·         Claire Thomas claire.thomas@flint-culture.com / +44 7877 651 976

·         Website: www.nationalcollection.org.uk

·         Twitter : @nat_collection

·          Instagram: @national.collection

·         Social Media Handle: #NationalCollection

Notes to Editors:

About The Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is both a world-leading science research centre and the most-visited natural history museum in Europe. With a vision of a future in which both people and the planet thrive, it is uniquely positioned to be a powerful champion for balancing humanity’s needs with those of the natural world.

It is custodian of one of the world’s most important scientific collections comprising over 80 million specimens. The scale of this collection enables researchers from all over the world to document how species have and continue to respond to environmental changes - which is vital in helping predict what might happen in the future and informing future policies and plans to help the planet.

The Museum’s 300 scientists continue to represent one of the largest groups in the world studying and enabling research into every aspect of the natural world. Their science is contributing critical data to help the global fight to save the future of the planet from the major threats of climate change and biodiversity loss through to finding solutions such as the sustainable extraction of natural resources.

The Museum uses its enormous global reach and influence to meet its mission to create advocates for the planet - to inform, inspire and empower everyone to make a difference for nature. We welcome over five million visitors each year; our digital output reaches hundreds of thousands of people in over 200 countries each month and our touring exhibitions have been seen by around 30 million people in the last 10 years.

About Towards a National Collection

Towards a National Collection is a major five-year research and development programme that aims to underpin the creation of a unified virtual ‘national collection’, dissolving barriers between the different collections of the UK’s museums, archives, libraries and galleries. Its ambition is to extend and diversify researcher and public access to our world-renowned collections beyond the physical boundaries of their location. The innovation driven by the programme will help to maintain the UK’s world leadership in digital humanities and set global standards in the field. The programme is funded through a £18.9 million investment by UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Strategic Priorities Fund and delivered by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The programme Directorate is based at the Independent Research Organisation, Historic Environment Scotland.

About the Arts and Humanities Research Council

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, funds internationally outstanding independent researchers across the whole range of the arts and humanities: history, archaeology, digital content, philosophy, languages and literature, design, heritage, area studies, the creative and performing arts, and much more. The quality and range research supported by AHRC works for the good of UK society and culture and contributes both to UK economic success and to the culture and welfare of societies across the globe.