title: iCollections - Digitising the British and Irish Butterflies in the Natural History Museum, London.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The Natural History Museum, London (NHMUK) has embarked on an ambitious programme to digitise its collections . The first phase of this programme has been to undertake a series of pilot projects that will develop the necessary workflows and infrastructure development needed to support mass digitisation of very large scientific collections. This paper presents the results of one of the pilot projects - iCollections. This project digitised all the lepidopteran specimens usually considered as butterflies, 181,545 specimens representing 89 species from the British Isles and Ireland. The data digitised includes, species name, georeferenced location, collector and collection date - the what, where, who and when of specimen data. In addition, a digital image of each specimen was taken. This paper explains the way the data were obtained and the background to the collections which made up the project.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Specimen-level data associated with British and Irish butterfly specimens have not been available before and the iCollections project has released this valuable resource through the NHM data portal.
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Gordon
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Paterson
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Albuquerque
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Vladimir
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Blagoderov
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brooks
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Steve
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cafferty
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Elisa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Cane
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Victoria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Carter
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chainey
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Robyn
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Crowther
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Lyndsey
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Douglas
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Joanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Durant
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Liz
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Duffell
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Adrian
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hine
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Honey
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Blanca
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Huertas
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Theresa
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Howard
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Rob
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Huxley
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Ian
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kitching
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ledger
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Caitlin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: McLaughlin
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Geoff
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Gerardo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mazzetta
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Malcolm
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Penn
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Jasmin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Perera
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Mike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sadka
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Elisabetta
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Scialabba
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Angela
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Self
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Darrell J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Siebert
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sleep
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Flavia
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Toloni
authors.affiliation: Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wing
keywords: British Isles; Collection digitisation; Ireland; butterflies; collections; mass digitsation