The Project
The focus of the three-year project "HEidigital" (2023 – 2025) is on the collections of the Natural History Museum at Heidecksburg. Approximately 10,000 objects from the geological collection, as well as 11,000 herbarium sheets from the botanical collection and around 800 objects from the coral collection in zoology, will be re-inventoried and digitized. This work is a prerequisite for relocating the collections to a new external depot and for the re-conception of a permanent exhibition. To advance scientific exploration, the digital copies will be made accessible online. In a digital exhibition area, visitors will be able to explore more objects from the Natural History Collections in the future.
The project "HEidigital" is funded by the Federal Ministry for Culture and Media.
Who is involved?
For the first time in the history of the Natural History Museum, a botanist, a geoscientist, and a zoologist are working side by side on the digital exploration of the collections as part of the HEIdigital project. The team also includes three additional positions for project management, data collection, and controlling.
Behind the glass scenes: Digitization of the objects.
The initially digitally recorded old inventories provide an overview of the entire collection and serve as the basis for the re-inventorying and simultaneous data collection of the objects to create the digital copies. A "Glass Digitalization Workshop" is planned. Here, visitors to the Heidecksburg in Rudolstadt will be able to gain insights into the work of the project team.
Creating digital showcases into the Natural History Collections.
A small but exquisite special exhibition currently provides insights into the collection of the currently closed Natural History Museum at Heidecksburg (until the end of June 2023) and is intended to be continuously supplemented in the workshop—as a kind of showcase into the collections—with more objects, their stories, and interesting aspects from the project work.