Funding for Future Projects

The Society seeks to further the study of and enthusiasm for the science of Natural History in order to continue Linnaeus' legacy. Will you help us?

• Enhance our grants to scientists: Support cutting-edge research in biodiversity, conservation, evolution and taxonomy, such as theSystematics Research Fund, which we increased from £20,000 in 2011 to £25,000 in 2012.
• Develop our Education Programme: Inspire future generations about Natural History by providing free educational resources.
• Ensure our Library, Portraits and Collections remain in the best condition in perpetuity.
• Develop and secure our premises in the long-term. Ideally, the Society would like to purchase its rooms in Burlington House.

Further conservation, cataloguing and digitisation of relevant collections:

• The correspondence of the apothecary Richard Pulteney (1730–1801).

• From Card to CALM: the Society is seeking to transfer the card record index (ca. 3,033 cards) of its manuscript holdings to a fully searchable, hierarchical, and standards-based catalogue. The manuscripts collection concerns the history of natural history and all branches of biology from the mid-1750s and is an invaluable resource for scientific research and outreach.

• Artworks project: 6,500 to 7,000 original botanical, zoological and geological drawings, representing mainly 19th-century natural history. These pieces are not only scientifically significant but also historically and artistically important and can be used as an inspiration for teaching students.

• The Günther albums: a major collection of animal art, contained in 39 large volumes of printed illustrations, drawings, photographs and printed ephemera on terrestrial and marine fauna of all regions, amassed by Albert C.L.G. Günther (1830–1914), 13th President of the Linnean Society.

• Shells Re-United Online: a joint project in collaboration with Museum of Evolution, Uppsala University. It would digitally re-unite the two Linnaean shell collections, in order to facilitate taxonomic and historical research.

• Manuscript records: the transcription, interpretation and migration of the data held in various formats into one single database and the online specimen catalogue, so that this information is available to researchers worldwide.

• Digitisation of the Charles Darwin Foundation Archive from the Galapagos Islands.

• Cataloguing, Conservation and Digitisation of the Smith Carpological Collection.