Mollusca Types in Great Britain: founding a union database

Abstract

Type specimens are essential to the study of malacology and are distributed across a wide range of museums in the UK. This initiative, funded by the John Ellerman Foundation, is the beginning of an integrated access and learning project bringing together curators from across the museum sector. Malacological curators from Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales (AC-NMW) and The Natural History Museum, London (NHM) worked with staff at seven partner museums in six UK cities. Together they developed a database and online resource connecting the Mollusca collections of National and other museums for the first time. At the time of publication, data on over 1800 type lots are available on the ‘Mollusca Types in Great Britain’ website. Since the launch in March 2018, some 1,189 users have accessed the site from over 60 countries. The database and website continue to be developed and new entries can be made at any time. The regional museum partners were given training focused on building confidence in recognising, researching, and interpreting the molluscan type specimens in their collections. The broader aims of this project were to strengthen and develop curatorial skills in specialist areas that could be transferable to other historically important natural history collections.