Being under the form of specimens, tissues or DNA samples; of stuffed organisms, dried herbaria plates or deep frozen plastic tubes, collections are of the utmost importance for taxonomists ! They contain our basic reference material and our most precious source of study, second only to nature itself.

This view is, unfortunately, not always understood properly and we have heard of too many cases where irreplaceable treasures have simply been lost or destroyed out of ignorance. Nature is under pressure, species disappear, and in many cases collections are the only remaining link with some aspects of the history of life. We must struggle and convince for the future of our collections, we must conserve them and we must expand them as much as possible.

These pages will be in construction for some time but ultimately we aim at proposing a number of useful information related to the collection management and exploration. Please bear with us as we are building these pages

Main Natural History collections in Switzerland (with short description and search engine when available) GOTO A

Main Natural History collections out of Switzerland (with short description and search engine when available) GOTO B

Main tissue, DNA or RNA collections worldwide (with short description and search engine when available) (Work in progress)

Collections management resources (Work in progress)

Collections usage (Work in progress)

Metadatabases (Work in progress)

A

 (Note: this might be developed, with further information on what exactly is in the collections, number of specimens etc…)

A complete listing of Natural History Museums/Botanical gardens in Switzerland is available here, or in this site.

Addresses below link directly to the collection pages when available.

Natural history Museums

• Museum of Natural History, Basel. No collection on-line. Contact is: nmb@bs.ch
• Natural History Museum, Berne. Rather detailed information on line, including listings and specimen numbers, but no catalogue. Contact is: contact@nmbe.unibe.ch
• Bündner Naturmuseum, Chur. No collection on-line. Contact is: info@bnm.gr.ch
• Museum of Natural History, Fribourg. No full collection on-line, but meta-data for geological, botanical and zoological collections and an illustrated catalogue of some marine shells. Contact is: Museehn@fr.ch
• Muéum d'histoire naturelle, Geneva. Collection online include types of fishes, types of amphibians and reptiles and types of invertbrates fossils. Contact is: info.mhn@ville-ge.ch
• Museum of Natural History, Lausanne. No collection on-line. Contact is: info.zoologie@vd.ch
• Museum of Natural History, Lugano. No collection on-line. Contact is: dt-mcsn@ti.ch
• Museum of Natural History, Neuchatel. Collection catalogue is complete for Vertebrata and publicly searchable. Contact is: info.museum@unine.ch
• Museum of Natural History, Solothurn. No catalogue on-line but listings in PDF format are available for vertebrates, invertebrates and fossils. Contact is: info@naturmuseum-so.ch
• Museum of Zoology, Zurich. Specimens exhibited in the galleries can be searched on-line. Contact is: zminfo@zoolmus.unizh.ch
• Natur-Museum Luzern. Catalogue not available. For further information please visit the homepage.
  

Botanical gardens

• Botanical Garden, Basel. No collection on-line. Contact is: Andres.Wiemken@unibas.ch (Director)
• Botanical Garden, Berne. No collection on-line. Contact is: info@botanischergarten.ch
• http://www.ville-ge.ch/cjb/ Botanical Garden, Geneva. Collection on-line include the Hedwig types catalogue; Contact is: fernand.jacquemoud@ville-ge.ch
• Botanical garden, Lausanne. No collection on line, but some catalogues are available as PDF. Contact is: info.botanique@vd.ch
• Herbaria of University and ETH, Zurich. Collections on-line and well documented with figures of specimens
• Botanical Garden, Zurich. No collection on-line although a database of cultivated plants is available. Contact is enz@systbot.unizh.ch

Museum of Paleontology

• Museum of Paleontology, Zurich. No collection on-line. Contact is: hfurrer@pim.unizh.ch

Note: Several other medium sized institutions, not specifically listed above also have summarized metadata on line (Number of specimens, main origin or collectors, etc.)

B

Lists of Natural History Museums in the World are available at

http://www.lib.washington.edu/sla/natmus.html
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/collections/other.html
http://www.nbii.gov/datainfo/syscollect/collections.html (US only)
http://sciweb.nybg.org/science2/IndexHerbariorum.asp (Herbaria)
http://public.srce.hr/botanic/cisb/Edoc/flora/subject/botgard.html (Botanical gardens)
http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/environment_and_nature/
    natural_history_museums/