NEW APPROACHES TO THE DIGITIZATION OF NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS AND TO NATURAL CAPITAL VALORIZATION AND CONSERVATION

Natural history collections (NHCs) are a fundamental archive for studying biodiversity across space and time. However, their potential for scientific research has long been limited by restricted physical accessibility, the access to specimens being normally possible only by loan, or traveling to the institutions in charge of their preservation. Over the past two decades, global digitization initiatives have begun to transform this landscape, enabling unprecedented integration, mobilization, and reuse of specimen-based data. This dissertation focuses on the digitization of historical NHCs - collections that are frequently fragile, taxonomically complex, and poorly documented - and investigates how their content - often poorly known, or even completely unknown - and their scientific value can be unlocked through carefully designed and context-specific digitization, mobilization, and valorization workflows. The work (a) develops and tests digitization workflows tailored to diverse typologies of historical collections; (b) documents procedures for imaging, label transcription, multilingual information management, and metadata standardization; and (c) demonstrates the potential of their exploitation after digitization. Case studies include historical collections such as the Vatova–Schiffner Algarium, the Lichenotheca Veneta by Vittore Trevisan and the Abramo Massalongo lichen collection preserved at the Natural History Museum of Venice (MSNVE), and the exsiccata Flechten Europas by Johann Adam Philipp Hepp, preserved at the Herbarium (PO) of the Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Porto (MHNC-UP). Their digitization produced datasets that were aggregated into international infrastructures, as well as exploited by means of thematic web portals, enabling long-term accessibility, cultural and scientific valorization, and new pathways for research. Overall, the dissertation contributes a set of empirically tested approaches that advance the processes related to the digitization, mobilization, and exploitation of historical NHCs, supporting data interoperability, reproducibility, and research based on specimen-derived evidence. It also showcases digitization at the collection level through the case study of pre-Linnaean herbaria in Italy census, while providing a “pocket guide” for collection managers, curators, and technicians in museums and research institutions that preserve and digitize historical NHCs, supporting the exploitation of natural history heritage in the digital age.