Posted on 01/03/2018 by Beth Wilkey

We’re delighted to announce that one of the key archival sources of data for the Mobile Museum project has been published online as part of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL).

The Specimens Distributed books provide a continuous documentary record of the objects and specimens which were sent from the Kew Museum of Economic Botany to various kinds of museums, schools, botanic gardens and other institutions and individuals across the UK and worldwide. The volume which has now been made available online covers the period 1881-1901.  It gives insights into the types of material being shared, the names of recipients, the institutions represented and the geographical locations reached during this period.

BHL is a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries that co-operate to digitise and make openly accessible the literature of biodiversity in their collections. Over the next two years of the Mobile Museum project further documentation will be digitised and shared online through BHL - watch this space!

Thank you to BHL, the Library, Art and Archives team at Kew and particularly Joanna Durant, Kew Metadata and Digitisation Officer, for helping this work become publicly accessible for research; and to the AHRC for funding the work.

You can access this freely available resource here.

We hope you find it useful!