Cristiana Serejo is Deputy Director at Museu Nacional/ Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Due to the great fire, which occurred in September 2018, the collection of the permanent exhibition, as well as part of the scientific collections, were lost. Despite the invaluable loss of historical objects and specimens, the institution has been invested in projects of preservation and digital recovery of its collections as a strategic action to safeguard and preserve collection data for future generations.
Founded in 1818, the National Museum (MNRJ) is the oldest scientific institution in Latin America. For more than two centuries the museum has been and is still a fundamental agent for the cultural and scientific development of the country. Nowadays, in addition to promoting scientific education and dissemination, the institution develops world-renowned research lines in the areas of anthropology, botany, zoology, geology and paleontology.
Due to the great fire, which occurred in September 2018, the collection of the permanent exhibition, as well as part of the scientific collections, were lost. Despite the invaluable loss of historical objects and specimens, the institution remains operant and continues investing in crucial fronts to mitigate the effects of the tragedy and ensure the progress of scientific productivity. And undoubtedly one of the strategic measures to maintain and save custody of the collections is digital preservation. Some initiatives are underway. In a broad sense the National Museum has 44 collections, and 38 are linked to the departments of entomology, invertebrates, vertebrates botany, and geology, paleontology and anthropology.
Most of these collections are digitized, but we still don't have an efficient collection management program that meets the house as a whole. On the other hand, we have punctual initiatives of open data.
From 2013 onwards, the zoological and botanical collections can be accessed in the Brazilian Biodiversity Computerization System (SIB-BR- http://www.sibbr.gov.br/) and which promoted the expansion of computerization and dissemination of information existing in their collections. Currently there are more than 300.000 entries with data from the zoology and botany collections of the National Museum in the IPT of the SIB-BR (https://ipt.sibbr.gov.br/mnrj/) in Darwin Core format.
The initiative of the SIB-BR was punctual with the zoological and botanical collections. Other collections of geology, paleontology and anthropology also need digital management and dissemination following and open data tendency of the actuality. For meeting these goals, we are working hard to put together projects and adequate TI infrastructure. Any help and collaborative project are very welcome!