DigiVol

Established in 2011 in collaboration with the Atlas of Living Australia, DigiVol is a groundbreaking museum collections digitisation project powered by citizen scientists – people like you. Volunteers work onsite at the Australian Museum DigiVol Lab and from home using DigiVol Online.

The program is dedicated to digitising the 21 million items in the Australian Museum collections, as well as providing other institutions with a platform to digitise their own collections.

Why digitise?

Invaluable information is stored within natural history museum specimens and objects, on their labels and in their archival records. Up until now, this information has only been accessible to researchers who can visit the collections' physical location.

By creating a digital record of each item – photographing them, transcribing their labels and documentation and entering that information into our searchable database – we are giving access to a global community of researchers, scientists and data analysts to analyse.

The information continues to have real-world effects by helping experts unlock the secrets of biodiversity, protect the environment and tackle climate change.