Zoology collecting strategy

The Zoology collecting strategy is based on the Natural History Museum’s Acquisitions Policy. The Zoology Collections are being developed within the following general guidelines:

• Fulfillment of a research need
• Scientific (or scholarship) importance
• Bridging or filling gaps in collections to ensure an appropriate breadth and depth of coverage
• Significance to the history of the discipline
• Potential for public exhibition or education
• Maintaining the comprehensiveness of the NHM collections
• Illuminating the existing NHM collections

The majority of new additions to the Zoology collections come from fieldwork, relating to active research programmes or consultancies. Using fieldwork as a source of new specimens contributes to almost the whole range of the Department’s collections and results in a more focused range of material.  The collections are also enhanced by significant donations from institutions and individuals, for example the marine ‘Discovery’ collections from the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences.

Material type priorties

DNA/RNA Collections: It is vital for future research that we encourage the collection of material/specimens suitable for molecular biological analysis. Furthermore, there is increasing demand to sample historical collection material for DNA, especially from the vertebrate collections.

Video and photographic images. Increasingly, images are an important collection in their own right, particularly in the case of protistans. We have also amassed large archives of historic photographs, glass and X-ray plates.