The University of Florence is one major public research and advanced training system in Italy. The outstanding scientific, historic and cultural relevance of both the museum collections of the Natural History Museum and the historic buildings belonging to the Museum System of the University (dating back to the XV cent. AD), coupled with the renowned scientific expertise of museum curators and their collaborators, guarantees the entire University of Florence a leading role in the museum community, both for the scientific research and for the thousands of visitors from all over the world who have been visiting its collections for almost 250 years.
The Museum has been among the founders of the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF), being involved in many of its initiatives (e.g., LifeWatch, COST-Mobilise and DiSSCo Prepare). It took part in the ‘Global Plant Initiative’, one of the first projects providing open access to biological data, through virtual platforms.
Today, it plays a key role in the coordination of the network of related museums at the national level and represents a preeminent interface of Italy at the European level, since representing the national community in DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections), a research infrastructure which will have consistent scientific and societal fall-outs in the next few years.