[x3d-public] Museum Specimens Find New Life Online - The New York Times

[Don Brutzman]

Science:  Museum Specimens Find New Life Online
By ERIK OLSEN, OCT. 19, 2015

"Museums worldwide are spending millions to digitize their collections. The Berlin Museum of Natural History is undertaking one of the more ambitious efforts, using digital technology to create 3D images of so-called type specimens."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/science/putting-museums-samples-of-life-on-the-internet.html

Includes embedded video "Digitizing the Natural World" by Erik Olsen (1:54)
http://www.nytimes.com/video/science/100000003978105/digitizing-natural-history.html?src=vidm

Reportedly they shoot 3000-5000 photographic images per specimen and then present them individually, providing a user interface with arrows to move from view to view.  Zooming and full screen enable close examination.

Article links:

	Zoosphere Specimen Web Hub
	http://www.zoosphere.net

	Project workflow
	http://www.zoosphere.net/project

	(Example) Canthon auricollis
	http://www.zoosphere.net/sequence/79/Canthon/auricollis

Images appear to be published under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license
	http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en

Current Project State:
"The ZooSphere project is in a very early stage. Yet it already yields excellent results concerning the automatic high resolution image sequence capturing of biological collection objects. We preferably release all software and web components as early as possible, though they are still subject of frequent change. Thereby, we would like to gain early feedback and cooperations, to increase the efficiency of our work. You are welcome to send any feedback or suggestions via mail to: contact at zoosphere.net"

all the best, Don
-- 
Don Brutzman  Naval Postgraduate School, Code USW/Br       brutzman at nps.edu
Watkins 270,  MOVES Institute, Monterey CA 93943-5000 USA   +1.831.656.2149
X3D graphics, virtual worlds, navy robotics http://faculty.nps.edu/brutzman