
Natural History Museum collections, science and digitisation centre
A planetary emergency demands an unprecedented response. Our new collections, science and digitisation centre at Thames Valley Science Park, Reading will be a gateway to the natural world, widening access to vital information to deliver innovative solutions to global challenges. With over 80 million objects spanning planetary to microscopic scales, billions of years to fractions of a second, genes to ecosystems and microminerals to mountain ranges, the Museum's collection is a powerful scientific tool. It drives our understanding of the planet, how it looked in the past and how it is changing, and provides a window into evidence-based solutions for our future. We want to protect and continue to expand and improve access to this vast data resource for scientists and researchers all over the world. We will move 28 million specimens and over 600m3 of accompanying Library material to a groundbreaking new centre for the study of natural history at Reading. We will work with partners to harness novel technologies and analysis techniques to gain new insights into the natural world and supercharge digitisation of the collections.






