Make your collection objects accessible to the world with MorphoSource.

MorphoSource ensures your institution can make 3D data, images, and videos of collection objects FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) at large scales and manage them according to your policies with minimal effort.
Making and sharing digital images of collection objects presents many opportunities for museums to magnify their impact. However, the effort required to generate, advertise, disseminate, and manage such data can be overwhelming and cost prohibitive. It can require numerous personnel with specific technical skills, such as staff with expertise using cameras and scanners, team members to handle the technical aspects of organizing and hosting data online, and someone to interact with users interested in using data. To make digital sharing worthwhile, it can seem a full digitization team is needed. While few museums can devote these kinds of staff resources, many collections nonetheless have accumulated large numbers of different kinds of 2D and 3D imagery of their collection objects. Many would like to make these images available to their communities, but aren't sure how to work with them or share them effectively. MorphoSource can help institutions leverage the imagery they have and accumulate more with marginal effort by existing staff.
MorphoSource launched in 2013 to support preservation and dissemination of digital representations of museum objects. Over the last 13 years it has developed unparalleled competency in supporting 3D formats, but it also supports 2D formats and audiovisual data. Our unique system allows management of large collections of object media with minimal effort. Institutional users specify access and re-use policies so that once data are made discoverable, potential downloaders agree to institution policies before accessing them. Further, detailed download and usage data are provided, allowing the museum to document value of its online collection. MorphoSource even leverages help from the scientific community to digitize collection objects. If researchers and educators create digital versions of museum objects for their scholarly activities, they can upload those images to MorphoSource in order to satisfy data sharing requirements of journals or research funders, or to develop lesson plans. MorphoSource allows institutions to claim management rights over these images if they are associated with a collection object. While collection staff might be worried about the data quality of images created by third parties, basic standards of quality are ensured by MorphoSource's robust submission workflow requiring that image documentation and formats meet the highest standards for accessibility and preservation (see more below). With MorphoSource support tools and staff, most institutions can keep up with the mobilization, management, and tracking of their digital data with marginal effort from a single staff person. With MorphoSource, institutions can begin to leverage the value of digital media they have, even before fully digitizing their collection databases.
MorphoSource is unparalleled in its ability to make virtually all kinds of media discoverable to the communities museums aim to enrich. MorphoSource has over 29,000 users that search for media based on a range of detailed criteria. These users are mainly educators, researchers, and students. Private individuals who access data on the site often do so to better understand and connect with natural and cultural processes and phenomena.
Many of the largest museums in the world already use MorphoSource, and word is spreading fast that it is the place to go if you are looking for media of museum objects. That is a huge benefit to small museums, because MorphoSource users don’t need to have prior awareness of a specific museum to find its media. In fact, it is a great way to introduce such users to a museum for the first time. If they find the digitized sample useful, they may schedule a trip to see more - and maybe digitize a few more of objects for the institution to add to its online presence! For biological objects, searches might happen according to taxonomy, preparation type, or anatomical part. For cultural heritage objects, users might search by object material, age, or type metadata. Whatever the scholarly subject matter, users can also filter their searches by image file type or imaging modality. If the collection object images meet a user's search criteria, it will be presented as an option, allowing small museums to be seen along side big museums based solely on the appropriateness and value of their holdings. Another way that MorphoSource helps with discovery is by extracting and displaying a range of file object details that will inform end users about data quality and appropriateness, which can include information like resolution and bit depth. Finally, MorphoSource generates an interactive preview of most file types (including 3D formats!) that can be viewed and inspected by end users. Users may inspect such previews in order to understand data quality and appropriateness before committing to download. Increasingly, they can also collect basic kinds of data from these previews as described more below. For museums that need strong controls over access to material, interactive previews can be turned off if collections staff chooses.
While making sure a museum's media can be found by the right communities is important, if the media is not documented and formatted appropriately, its usability can be limited. MorphoSource amplifies usability of media through several strategies targeting different kinds of use and users. First and foremost, we have studied and adopted carefully developed standards for digital preservation and applied them to the foundational architecture of the MorphoSource platform. All critical metadata related to imaging and processing workflows are preserved, providing all information a user might need to assess quality, strengths, and/or limitations of media as data. Furthermore, MorphoSource only accepts image files that the platform can fully interpret and display, meaning it does not allow unusuable media into the repository. Finally, the platform generates useable previews of all media. Users can work with these previews directly through a browser without the need for specialized software. Previews are especially important for 3D volume data and 3D models, where browser previews enables classroom use. We are constantly increasing the kinds of use and visualizations that are supported by our 3D previews.
From an institutional perspective, making data discoverable and accessible is at times not enough if the institution is unable to track and report on usage. In fact, unreported or misreported use of collection objects is a common frustrating problems collection institutions encounter. Collection institutions strongly benefit from documenting the value of their collections, and one of the only ways of providing evidence of collection value is to show that people use and reference it in public and scholarly discourse. Inadequate information on usage is a key deficiency for many data sharing platforms, which are often not set up to allow contributors to extract detailed usage statistics.
However, on MorphoSource, an institution is able to accrue, access, and export detailed statistics about data use and re-use for its collection objects. These usage reports are especially rich because downloading users must complete a detailed survey about their use case before they download media. We are working all the time to develop new ways of tracking and reporting usage. In the near future, MorphoSource will provide managing institutions with the option of receiving a monthly digest reporting all the key activities related to their collection on MorphoSource. These reports will not only provide the latest updates about collection value, but also highlight management tasks the museum may want to pursue.
MorphoSource dashboard tools allow collection institutions to specify detailed re-use guidance and policies, which users must agree to before being allowed to download a media file of interest. Additionally, institutions can setup their collection so that users cannot download media without first sending a system request to an institutional manager user. Managers can review and adjudicate the request in the system. This provides collection staff with the power to stay informed on usage and re-use of their collection materials with minimal staff time devoted to oversight.
As a resource designed to preserve and disseminate media representing collection objects, the MorphoSource team is acutely aware of the importance of having accurate information about the physical object represented by that media. Because MorphoSource is not the authoritative steward of information on any museum's objects, it leverages all available strategies to encourage the flow of object information from museum database systems to MorphoSource in a way that reduces errors and duplication of effort. One of the most successful ways it does this with biological collections is to integrate with collection aggregators such as iDigBio and GBIF. Instead of requiring duplicate manual entry of specimen information into MorphoSource, MorphoSource allows users to link media to specimen records ingested from these aggregators. If museums send updated information to the aggregators, our system's regular checks of the aggregators will see this and update MorphoSource records accordingly. We are always interested in linking to other kinds of informatic resources (e.g., for cultural heritage objects) when they become available. For institutions that do not send their collection information to an agregator, managing users of that collection are able to edit any specimen record at will, and our staff can help with batch updating of specimen records when needed.
MorphoSource provides several layers of enhanced documentation and preservation assurances, especially for 3D media, images, and audiovisual content, where the support offered by off-the-shelf institutional digital repositories is quite limited. We offer standards-based metadata schemas tuned to different imaging modalities, with deep support for 3D file formats. Another strong documentation tool that MorphoSource provides is the ability to link multiple media datasets that are related because some were derived from others. Media datasets can be linked through parent-child relationships in complex ways with standardized metadata for describing the activities involved in both initial imaging and downstream deriving. These relationships go well beyond usual topics like file versioning and offer unparalleled support for tracking derivative media created through complex workflows. The parent-child linkages of MorphoSource allow two independently deposited files of completely different formats to be connected to reflect processing workflows. As an example, three datasets from the same scanning event, such as a raw CT projection series, a reconstructed image stack, and a segmented 3D model, can be linked to each other with clear indications regarding software and methods used to create each file. In this way, MorphoSource can provide meaningful associations between files of very different formats that are connected through imaging and processing workflows. Furthermore, child media can be associated with multiple parents to reflect complex creation protocols. This can be relevant for two pieces of a fossil that were scanned separately but digitally merged into a final model. A component of successful preservation for future use is documentation of the source files that were modified to create a particular file. MorphoSource accomplishes this with features that specifically support museum users and the breadth of image modalities and formats they need to preserve.
MorphoSource ensures ingested media are interpretable and allows users to inspect whether scale has been specified accurately through a systematic media characterization and derivative generation tool. When users contribute media, our system automatically attempts to characterize file-level metadata and generate a 3D, 2D, or video preview. If the system is unable to do this, it is an indicator for the contributor that something is wrong with the file, which may hinder its usability or interpretability. When MorphoSource does successfully create a 3D preview, it gives the contributor a chance to inspect that preview in order to check for accurate proportions (of CT volumes) and scale (of CT volumes and meshes). If MorphoSource’s 3D preview misinterprets newly contributed media, there is a strong chance that anyone who downloads it will as well. By setting a baseline with deposits where the readability and accuracy have been verified, MorphoSource can support format migrations far into the future as standards and habits change with minimal concern about data corruption. These rigorous approaches to readability and accoracy also provide the foundation needed for MorphoSource to continue expanding in-browser activities for image previews. MorphoSource is already provides an unmatched suite of easy measurement functions in its 3D viewer. This sets the stage for a revolution in who can study museum media. In particular, it removes multiple barriers preventing students at all levels from measuring and learning from museum objects.
While MorphoSource is designed to support the needs of even the smallest collection staff, we also offer features supporting enterprise scale use. In particular, MorphoSource has a powerful, regularly updated API for automated connections between the repository and institutional data resources. A variety of community research projects and collections software platforms utilize the MorphoSource API to enrich information resources in the databases they maintain. Furthermore, MorphoSource recognizes that institutional strategies, opportunities, and limitations for data hosting are rapidly evolving. We have developed and continue to develop a variety of hosting protocols that allow institutions to tailor where and how the media they share on MorphoSource is hosted. Among others, this can include the ability to surface media in MorphoSource, with all of the discoverability and accessibility features offered by the platform, with files located on institutional storage and with institutional control over file lifecycles. Get in touch and we'll be happy to tell you about how we can support institutional infrastructure resources in a way that best fits your museum or institution.
Reach out to discuss having your institution represented on MorphoSource or to ask questions about membership. We'll be happy to talk.