Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

Pakistan Museum of Natural History (PMNH) is the only natural history museum on the national level in Pakistan that holds more than one million specimens of animals, plants, minerals, rocks, and fossils. To enhance the role of the PMNH and disseminate its knowledge among scientific and cultural communities at the national and international level including web users/audiences and gain effective control over its huge collections, the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology’s funded project “Biodiversity of Pakistan: Database and Global Networking (BGN)” has already been been completed. The project carried out automation and networking of PMNH for efficient maintenance/retrieval of specimen records, web publishing of information, and provision of maximum information to the public, researchers, graduates, and policy-makers. The project was also part of the programme entitled “Global Biodiversity Information Facility.” The digitization/archival of museum records has grown globally in the past few years and many countries have digitized their massive collections beyond display cases by floating it online. Sensing the need, the PMNH has already digitized about 10% of its specimens through its collaboration with the GBIF through the BGN project. The PMNH has prepared a proposal for funding to IGNITE (formerly ICT R & D Fund) in order to digitize all the specimens deposited at the museum. User-friendly software will be developed having various associated applications following international standardized protocols. The final product in terms of digitized data of specimens will be made available online to the web users worldwide.