Natural history collections are biological archives of specimens and specimen data for research in biodiversity, ecology, and evolution. Specimens are available in the museum or through loans. Specimen data are published through data aggregators or portals such as GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility). GBIF is an international network and data infrastructure funded by the world’s governments and aimed at providing anyone, anywhere, open access to data about all types of life on Earth.
As of July 2023, GBIF is hosting 2,347,232,996 records (that’s 2.3 billion) including data in natural history collections. Data are immediately available in summary form or for download. Use of PSMs specimen data can be viewed here. A secondary portal is iDigBio with 137,571,430 records. iDigBio has fewer records but has more resources for outreach, education, and museum professional and volunteers dealing with curation and especially digitization of collections.
GBIF and iDigBio
GBIF and iDigBio provide worldwide access to PSM’s 81,633 records for vertebrates and vascular plants as well as herbarium specimens images. Records can be accessed by clicking the links below.
GBIF PSM metrics – taxonomy, geography, acquisition rates, all records
GBIF PSM Vertebrates
GBIF PSM Vascular Plants
In the links, PSM is selected (Institution Code =PSM). Additional criteria (e.g., year, localities, taxon) can be added using the left side column. Click the GBIF logo for all 2.3 billion records.
Other Portals
The Consortium of Pacific NW Herbaria or CPNWH hosts 3,156,755 records from 52 herbaria. Note 10,000 can be retrieved at a time, so not all PSM specimens can be viewed in one search. Herbarium data and images are also published in GBIF and iDigBio portals.
Bird Wing and Tail Image Collection has 1,500 upper and lower views of wings and an upper view of tails hosted through Collins Library Digital Collections.
VertNet is an additional facility that published our data (last update July 2023) to GBIF and iDigBio (thanks to Dave Bloom, VertNet administrator). However, as of July 2023, records available via the VertNet search portal haven’t been updated due to technical issues.