Collection

Services
we offer

Researchers can borrow collection objects from Naturalis, visit the Naturalis collection or have access to a wide range of (digital) literature on biodiversity.

Visit the collections

The collections are available for research by visiting scientists. If you wish to visit a collection you can contact us by sending a request to collectie@naturalis.nl. A request from a student must be accompanied by a letter of the institute.

Naturalis' Library

Naturalis has one of the world's largest collections of scientific, taxonomic and paleontological literature. Over 300,000 books and magazines about the natural world and biodiversity can be discovered there. From leading international magazines to…

Borrowing collection items

Do you want to borrow collection items for exhibitions, research or for other purposes? Find out how to go about it.

Origins
of collections

Our collections that we use for scientific research have been built up over several centuries. The colonial past and the redressing of injustice should receive the attention they deserve. It is therefore a good thing that research is carried out into the provenance of Dutch museum objects that are of cultural, historical or religious importance for their country of origin.

News
from the collection

Work never stops in our collection. Preparing new animals, scrubbing meteorites and cleaning whale skeletons is just a tiny part of that work.

Apollo butterflies full of surprises

The CollAction team was deployed to transfer about 120,000 Apollo butterflies to standard drawers. This work allows these butterflies to be used in science. During this task, the CollAction-team quickly encountered some surprises.

Donating
collection

Do you have a collection or a special item at home and would you like to donate it to Naturalis?

Of course we like that! Unfortunately not all objects are suitable for inclusion in our collection. Naturalis selects on the scientific and aesthetic value of the objects. We only include objects with sufficiently accurate data or that are suitable for use in the exhibition. It is also important that the objects are provided with the correct exemptions. Contact collection@naturalis.nl for more information.

Collection
collaborations

The Naturalis collection is one of the largest naturalis history collections on the planet. Maintaining it, and making it accessible, is a huge undertaking.

Collection staff member in the butterfly collection

CollAction Eliminating backlog

Keeping a collection of 43 million objects in good condition for future generations is a big responsibility. Parts of the collection have fallen into poor condition for various reasons (such as past backlogs, new construction and collection relocations and…

Digitization & documentation of Singaporean type specimens

Signify is a project that aims to document and digitize 10,000 natural history objects collected in Singapore over the past 200 years. The focus of this project is on so-called type specimens - the reference objects on which scientific names are based…

Hidden moths: Make papillots visible in a streamlined way

In the papillot project, non prepared moths, which have been stored in pouches for decades, are made accessible to science by photographing, digitizing and storing them in a well-organized manner.

Whale strandings: What can we learn from it?

It sometimes happens that a large dead whale washes up on the Dutch coast, or dies in the waters off the coast. Naturalis Biodiversity Center then has the task to assist in salvaging the mammal and to preserve parts of the animal for scientific research…

True bugs in the picture

This is it: Pseudaufidus trifasciatus, a cicada species described in 1957 by entomologist and curator H. C. Blöte from Leiden. The cicada depicted above is not just any specimen of that species, but it is the so-called holotype: The specimen used when the…

Online access
to our collection and collection data

Catalogue of Life
One worldwide name list of all animals, plants and fungi that have been described by scientists.
Linnaeus
Are you a species specialist working to make taxonomic knowledge and type information available online? Please consider the software-as-a-service package Linnaeus.
BioPortal
As a researcher or collection manager, you can quickly browse the Naturalis digital collection.
Netherlands Biodiversity API/Data Services
For software developers or bio-computer scientists, we built an API to provide access the digital collection information from Naturalis.