Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences

Founded in 1846, the RBINS is one of the major Scientific Belgian Federal Institute (FSI) having many responsibilities in scientific expertise at national and international level. It is involved in important scientific research activities and carries out public service missions. It is open to everyone through the Museum of Natural Sciences. RBINS houses a varied and exceptionally rich zoological collection, a famous palaeontological collection, completed by prehistoric items and a mineral and geological collection. For physical specimens the grand total is about 36.000.000 specimens or items with around 100,000 primary types of fossil and extant species. This ranks the Institute at the third position in Europe behind the Natural history museums in London and in Paris and places RBINS among the world's top ten collections in terms of volume of specimen stored and available for research. The RBINS scientific library is one of the largest documentary resources of NH in Belgium. It offers 695,368 volumes. The Filing Cabinet owns about 35,000 geographical, hydrological and geological maps. The unique Dautzenberg collection contains rare volumes concerning conchology. In this respect, the RBINS plays an important role both at national and international levels in matters concerning heritage management and development across a number of fields: collections conservation, preservation and curation, databanks, libraries and specialized archives, while through their permanent and temporary exhibitions, the role is further extended into educational and dissemination activities.