World-renowned Natural History Museum, London entrusts SER to create next-generation collections management system

• SER to help the Natural History Museum, London to deliver on vision of transforming the study of natural history
• Doxis chosen for scalability and configurability to manage growing collection of 20 million records representing 7 million specimens

SER’s Doxis Intelligent Content Automation platform will help the Museum to deliver on its vision of transforming the study of natural history through engaging and involving the widest possible audience and securing the future of the Museum’s collections.

Visited by millions of people per year, the Natural History Museum, London is a leading global science research centre with over 300 scientists caring for more than 80 million objects spanning billions of years of history. With 20 million records representing 7 million specimens and rising, the Museum needed a CMS that could scale with its rapidly growing collections and provide a future-proof solution. The Museum also needed to digitise and improve crucial processes such as loans management, increase scalability potential, and automate efficiency metrics.

The Natural History Museum, London initiated the RECODE (Rethinking Collections Data Ecosystems) programme to find a vendor that could help it “promote the management of and engagement with natural sciences collections and data, through the development of a scalable, sustainable, and future-proof solution, which will transform natural sciences collections management globally and underpin research that will enable people and the planet to thrive.”

After an exhaustive 4-stage public tender with 13 vendors, the RECODE team chose SER and its Doxis Intelligent Content Automation platform. Dr Steen Dupont, RECODE Programme Manager, describes why SER won: “On a human level, we felt a strong alignment with the SER team, who approached us with immense curiosity, were meticulous and professional, and displayed a willingness to go on this digital transformation journey with us. They truly understood the nature and challenges of the tasks and our vision.”

“Technology-wise, it was all there: Doxis as a platform is incredibly configurable, which was a driver from day one,” Dupont continues, “We want to build on top of a platform that is accessible to others, not just us. We hope that other institutions can pick this up and adapt it to their needs.”

The vision of RECODE is to provide data to improve science, widen and build knowledge sharing, and contribute to some of the biggest questions facing humankind. Solutions to these problems can be found in data associated with natural science collections: from understanding signals of climate change response to slow extinction rates, reducing risk from zoonotic diseases and minimising degradation of natural capital to addressing challenges of food security.

Steen summarises, “SER will help us to create a next-generation collections management system which will benefit the community and further modernise the Museum’s collection management system.”

Dr John Bates, CEO of SER, adds, “Improving knowledge sharing – this is a mission on which SER and the RECODE team aligned on immediately. We are so pleased to support the Natural History Museum in establishing a modern, scalable and future-proof collections management system based on Doxis ICA – and not in the least because we are all huge fans of the museum! We know that Doxis will empower them to deliver on their vision and make an important contribution to the greater good.”