Reading Nature's Library

Where is Manchester Museum?

Manchester Museum is part of the University of Manchester and is located on Oxford Road, Manchester, UK.

How can I help?

By helping us to transcribe our specimen labels we will be able to unlock a wealth of scientifically important information. This will help us to make knowledge available to the widest audience possible on topics such as biodiversity, species ranges, changing climate and extinction events.

Can I magnify the label?

You can zoom in and out to help you read the label or flip it in another direction if that helps.

I made a mistake/ I want to edit my answers, can I go back and change it?

Don't worry. Lots of identifications are taken for each specimen so a mistake or missed field won't matter by the end.

What if I can't read a label?

You can flag up any that you are struggling to read by clicking on Talk at the end of the classification. You can Hashtag them or leave a comment and we will get back to you.

What if I have a Question?

Then please join us on Talk. We may not answer immediately, but will check Talk regularly and get back to you as soon as possible.

Location: where can I type the place name? There is just a very limited selection of possible places, none of which is the place name I need / the place name is unclear.

Just type in the place name (click on 'select'), or type 'unclear'.

Collector was not in the drop down list - what should I do?

Just type it in by clicking on 'select' at the top of the drop down list

Are we asked to expand abbreviations seen on the slide labels, e.g. "Ehr." to "Ehrenberg" if this information is available on diatombase? Or should we transcribe precisely as the labels are written?

If it is an author, eg Ehr. exactly as it is written, as author abbreviations are standard. If it is an abbreviated place name, eg Brit. Hond. type it in full if you can.

Are we asked to fix obvious spelling errors, e.g. locality names (Courseulles not "Courseules")?

Yes, if it's obviously a mistake, and definitely not a different latin name / location.

The locality in this case includes a cedilla mark (curlicue under the "c"). I can enter these and other diacritical marks (accents, umlauts, etc.) from my keyboard, but should I? Different operating systems will code these differently, and they might come out in the database as nonsense characters, so should I just type "c" or the closest standard ASCII character?

Type it as a 'c', without the cedilla, to ensure it codes correctly when uploading. The site record in our collections management system will have all versions of spellings so each will be searchable.

Does this specimen's enamel coverslip ring count as "decorative"? I've seen a complete gradient from barely visible red hairlines to bold red lines, half as wide as the ring itself. If this specimen's red ring(s) doesn't count as decorative, then where do you draw the line (so to speak)?

Enamel rings are classed as decorative when they are a different colour like green, red or blue or striped with those colours, where the mounter has made a feature of it. Another way to look at it is, "Does the enamel ring look pretty?" Not many of the red border label slides saying DIATOMACEAE are decorative.