The Botany collections of the Natural History Museum, London include a large collection of important early (17^th/18^th century) plant collections such as those of Sir Hans Sloane, John Clayton, George Clifford and Paul Hermann. To improve access to these collections which are not normally available for loan and to reduce handling of delicate old material a programme was set up to capture digital images of priority specimens and make them available on the web.

The method chosen was scanning with a Photophase-plus digital camera in preference to using a flat bed scanner or taking and scanning 35mm transparencies.

This decision was based on :

· ease of instantly improving poor images

· one single operation

· Range of resolution available 100K - 100MB file size.

· Undesirability of reversing delicate material or placing large, bound volumes on scanner

· Good depth of field given by camera particularly for uneven bound volumes

Over the last 18 months some 4000 specimens and drawings mounted in 13 bound volumes and on several hundred single sheets have been digitized and made available on the WWW.

The three main elements of the process were:

· scanning and modification of images with Adobe Photo shop and writing CDs

· gathering, confirming and entering data into supporting database

· Development of web front end

An average of 20 images/ day could be achieved with the bound volumes which improved as the project progressed These volumes need considerable handling, focussing etc. In contrast, up to 60 single sheets / day could be handled

Images are stored as archive CDs at 300dpi, 20MB files, main web images at 72 dpi, 150K files and thumbnails at 72 dpi , 15K files.

Databases of supporting information were added containing data such as current names, basionyms, polynomials, links to Publications, determinations, type status etc

Staff resources used were:

1 technician for 1 year - scanning, front end design, data entry

1 technician for 6 months - literature research, data entry

1 consultant for approx 2 weeks - identification

Further details of the project and the digital databases can be viewed on at

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/botany/databases/hermann/index.htm

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/botany/clayton/index.html

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/botany/databases/sloane/index.htm