Booz Allen Develops Digitization Strategy for Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History
Pro bono project helps provide unparalleled access to the largest, most comprehensive natural history collection in the world.
How can any organization—even the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, part of the world’s preeminent museum and research complex—keep track of a collection that is always growing and today includes more than 126 million objects, specimens, and cultural artifacts? Just as importantly, how can the Natural History Museum share its collection with the world’s children, scientists, and researchers, many of whom can’t travel to the museum on the National Mall in Washington, DC?
It’s not easy.
At any given time, the museum has less than 1 percent of its vast and ever-expanding collection on exhibit. But researchers need access to the other 99 percent, which should not be unavailable simply because it’s not on display. According to Elizabeth Duggal, the museum’s Associate Director for External Affairs and Public Programs, “It’s vital that we figure out a way to get the collection out there—to the community at large.” Susan Fruchter, the museum’s Associate Director of Operations, elaborates, “We want to bring that wealth of information to researchers all over the world as well as to children, to excite them about science and research.”
Compounding the need to provide access to the entire collection is the fact that many of the museum’s specimens and artifacts are quite old and exceedingly fragile. For example, if too many people handle any one of the museum’s 33 million insects (each painstakingly pinned into a tiny box), that specimen would surely disintegrate.
That’s why “digitizing” the Natural History Museum’s collection—providing access in appropriate electronic formats to information and objects that previously had to be accessed physically—makes so much sense. Over the past few years, some of the museum’s departments have begun to digitize collections, archives, libraries, and research information. But they have done so opportunistically, because the museum had no guiding strategy in place to ensure that it continues to be a leader not only in science, research, and education, but also in the production, management, and use of its information.
Previously, Booz Allen Hamilton had conducted pro bono engagements for other Smithsonian museums including the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian. With those successes in mind, the Natural History Museum’s leadership team called on Booz Allen to craft a digital asset management strategy to provide greatly enhanced access to its collection and to preserve its data for future generations.
The Booz Allen pro bono team has developed a strategy that addresses the management of both the digital assets that the museum has already created and provides a framework for creating and managing future digital assets to meet the research, collections management, and public outreach needs of the museum and its stakeholders.
By putting in place a more coordinated and rigorous digitization program, the Natural History Museum will provide scientists, researchers, and children with much more than an “automated card catalogue.” Ms. Fruchter elaborates, “When they’re sitting in a catalogue, it’s hard to understand the relationship between a plant in one area and a bug in another. But when you put them in a digital database, you can actually have the computer think for you and make those connections.”
Booz Allen vice president Fred Knops, who is leading the team, is thrilled to be working with the Natural History Museum. “I’m very proud of the fact that we have helped this institution with its digitization strategy. You can see how this might redefine how a museum exists over the next few decades, and will fundamentally transform its basic operational processes.” Fred continues, “The Smithsonian is one of the preeminent knowledge institutions in the world and anything Booz Allen can do to help maintain and forward that status is a wonderful thing.”
As it implements the digitization strategy, the Natural History Museum will do more than provide unparalleled access to the largest, most comprehensive natural history collection in the world; it will also protect and preserve its fragile specimens, reduce storage and staffing costs, and improve its overall efficiency and effectiveness. And—for generations to come—millions more children worldwide will be excited about science.
story posted January 29, 2008
