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Online Collections

To provide worldwide access to its priceless collections of specimens, manuscripts, letters and artwork, the Society is constantly adding to its Online Collections.

The image quality is such that few will need to handle the priceless specimens and manuscripts to obtain the information they seek.

The Society’s aim is to make available its primary research material in digital formats to support taxonomic and conservation efforts and historical research worldwide, as well as providing public pleasure and enjoyment. Digitisation and other projects are ongoing, and further collections, such as the Herbarium of Sir James Edward Smith, will be added by 2013.

Find out more about the Society's Specimen Collections.

IMPORTANT NEWS: Due to essential building works, the Specimen Collections & Library will remain closed to visitors from December 2012 to end of June 2013. We will attempt to answer email and telephone enquiries, but it may not always be possible for us to access the necessary material.

Please click on the links below for direct access to the collections currently available online:

Related Links

Using the Online Collections

Advice for using the Online Collections can be found HERE

An integrated tool, FSI (Flash-based Single Source Image) Viewer, has been included with the collections to enable users to zoom in to very small sections of the specimens to see close detail. FSI Viewer also comes with a measuring tool for the Linnaean Herbarium. The buttons at the bottom right hand side of the FSI Viewer window are to use the zooming and measuring tools.

From a search results list it is possible to open more than 1 image window at a time so that side by side comparison can be made.

By clicking the "+" symbol in the menu at the bottom, you should be able to enlarge a selected area of the image up to nine times, and get a very detailed view. Please note that each "zoom" can take a while to load as it is processing a lot of data.

By clicking on the symbol with the four arrows, you can move the image by guiding your cursor (which will display as a hand on the image) over the image and click and drag. You can move the detailed view as if working with a magnifying glass. Just make sure that you click back onto "+" or "-" if you would like to zoom in or out.