Digitization of the Zoological Museum Collections at the National Museums of Kenya

The zoology department at the National Museums of Kenya holds over 3 million specimens of East African terrestrial and aquatic fauna. Digitization of the collection has been going on since the early 1990s, when catalogue books and accession cards were converted to digital information in Microsoft Access databases and Excel spreadsheets. Thereafter, data was transferred to a more standardized database system, Specify 5 ( later upgraded to Specify 6) , which is user-friendly, low cost, interactive and enables a greater level of synthesis and integration of data . Specimen details captured include locality, scientific name, collector, date of collection, and habitat. Experts at the department countercheck the data for accuracy of taxonomic and geographical information prior to incorporation into the Specify database that is subsequently backed up on a server. The use of data management software such as MS Excel spreadsheets and MS Access prior to incorporation into Specify serves as a quarantine mechanism to minimize errors, provides back-up in the event that the server crashes, and enables offline data capture. To date, the information from over 113,000 specimens has been captured, including 25,000 invertebrates, 38,000 fish, 6,000 birds, 4,000 mammals, 28,508 reptiles and amphibians, and 12,091 bones. Digitisation of data has enhanced its usability, as demonstrated by the recent mobilisation of the departmental data for among other things, mapping Kenya’s faunal diversity and conservation trends for the just completed National Biodiversity Atlas, mapping species distribution in Kenya’s water towers, and modelling of Kenya’s vulnerability to climate change. Georeferencing remains a challenge to the digitization effort, especially for specimens with vague geographical information.