Collectomics – towards a new framework to integrate museum collections to address global challenges

Collections’ digitisation is a priority in many natural history collections, and publicly available datasets are expanding rapidly. The potential value of collections remains largely untapped even in modern research, because the vast scope of collections dwarfs current efforts at data mobilisation. Collections are continually expanding, and there are an estimated 3 billion undigitised specimen records worldwide. In this review, we use a simple model to illustrate that current efforts at global digitisation will not succeed until the late 21st century at the earliest, unless new technologies are harnessed and commitments by funding bodies and society are made. As we advance toward specimen digitisation, an equally important consideration is that the majority of these digital records only represent a fraction of the information potentially available from the collection objects. The term “collectomics” was coined in discussions within the Senckenberg institution as a phrase for digital frameworks that embrace all current and future data and knowledge derived from specimens. This expands on the concept of museomics, which was originally defined to focus on molecular data generated from museum specimens. Rooted in the concept of the extended specimen, collectomics encompasses metadata, images, traits, DNA, and further data extracted in the future with yet unknown applications, all of which are connected to environmental data and other historical contextual information. Thus, a view of digitisation under the collectomics concept is not limited to natural history collections but directly integrates evolutionary, ecosystem and social sciences, including the human contributions of collectors, donors, and researchers in the past and future. A “collectomics” view envisions seamless integration of multidimensional specimen-based data, with interoperability among historical, artistic, ethnographic, and natural history collections, to generate knowledge that is needed to tackle global challenges.