Electronic museum
The Museum is the first museum of its size to bring all its collections management into a single, integrated electronic system.
Known as EMu, the Electronic Museum collections management system went live in March 2008. Among other benefits, it means we can develop ways to display our collections information to the world on the internet.
Installing EMu was a three-year project that involved pulling together more than 20 million records across the Museum’s five science departments. We are now partners in an EMu user community of more than 200 institutions worldwide, including other large museums such as the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History.
Looking to the future
EMu allows our collections management to be compatible with international standards as well as the Museum’s own curation policies and procedures. Installing the system has brought the management of collections data in all our science departments into alignment.
Once the collections are available online we will also link with international collaborations such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), which aims to enable access to biodiversity information by anyone, from anywhere, via the internet.
The challenge we face now is to develop methods and programmes to record all of the Museum’s estimated 70 million objects in EMu.
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Palaeontology specimen database
Search the palaeontology database for specimens held at the Museum.
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Zoology specimen database
Search the zoology database for specimens held at the Museum.