About Us
What is Dassco
DaSSCo is a national program to digitise all of Denmark’s natural history specimens. DaSSCo, started in September 2021 as a result of a 50 million kroner grant from the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science. Our focus for the first 5 years is to build the infrastructure to support mass digitisation at a national scale. This includes building up our teams and expertise on a range of natural history objects. DaSSCo is committed to the wider goals of open access and sharing our developing expertise, solutions and software. DaSSCo is part of Pan-European research infrastructure, DiSSCo which involves 120 institutions in 21 countries and will create a virtual, digital research infrastructure uniting European Science Collections – thereby making approximately 1.5 billion objects accessible for everyone.
Why Dassco
The unequal physical distribution of scientific collections worldwide limits access to valuable information. In this digital age DaSSCo will make digital versions of the specimens widely available for everyone, promoting a better understanding of Earth's ecosystems and addressing critical questions within global challenges. Digitisation creates digital surrogates of the physical specimens which reduce the need for physically handling and the risk of damage. Digitisation thus helps protect this important resource for future generations. DaSSCo's mission aligns with global goals, EU policies, and the Danish Government's vision. The consortium's combined collections hold 19 million botanical, geological, zoological specimens and historical artifacts collected over 400 years.
Who are we
DaSSCo is a collaboration between multiple institutions in Denmark. DaSSCo is formed by a consortium of 4 institutions. The Natural History Museum of Denmark (The University of Copenhagen) is leading the project, in close collaboration with Science Museums Aarhus University, the Natural History Museum Aarhus and the Technical University of Denmark. The Technical University of Denmark does not hold any collections but is a technical partner focussing on 3D imaging and processing.
