Digital Collection

As part of the NEUSTART KULTUR funding program, techniques for digitizing collection objects are being tested and evaluated at the German Oceanographic Museum. In addition to the exhibitions, research and the collection are among the core areas at the German Oceanographic Museum. The scientific work focuses on six areas: (1) marine mammals, (2) fish, (3) birds, (4) crustaceans and botany, (5) invertebrates with a focus on corals, and (6) cultural heritage: fisheries, marine research, and marine technology.

In addition to testing various techniques for digitizing collection objects, the goal of the Marine Collections Online project is to create a digitization concept and present digital collection objects online. Due to the diversity of objects, which includes marine mammal skulls, dry preparations of crustaceans and corals, bird skulls, or wet preparations of fish, several digitization methods need to be tested. Currently, high-resolution photographs, 360° photographs, and 3D scans are being produced as examples to evaluate these methods and how they can later be established in regular operations.

In the future, a digital collection portal will help to make the large and diverse collections in the background of the German Oceanographic Museum's exhibitions accessible to external researchers but also to the general public. In this way, we want to arouse interest in the museum's collection work and make current topics such as species conservation and sustainability more widely known.