Scientific collection  A scientific collection is a collection of items that are preserved, catalogued, and managed for the purpose of scientific study. Scientific collections dealing specifically with organisms plants, fungi, animals, insects and their remains, may also be called natural history collections or biological collections. The latter may contain either living stocks or preserved repositories of biodiversity specimens and materials. Scientific collections hold a tangible portion of the cumulative evidence base in such fields as biology (especially taxonomy and evolutionary biology), geology, and archaeology. They may be stored and managed by governments, educational institutions (e.g. colleges and universities), private organizations (including museums), or individuals. Prominent uses of scientific collections include the systematic description and identification of biological species, the study and prediction of long-term historical trends (including impacts of climate change), the dating and analysis of historical objects (e.g. via wood samples and ice cores with annual rings), and the maintenance of teaching resources. The indexing of the collections was historically made by directories, catalogs, index cards, today supplemented by or replaced by databases with information such as e.g. scientific description, including picture, name, location, find circumstances, fund age, scientific analysis, phylogenetic relationships, DNA and isotope analysis results, analysis of pollutants, references, condition of the property, owner changes and name changes. Many organizations support the indexing and handling of their collections by specialist libraries. Research collections hold especially museums, notably natural history museums, botanical gardens, universities and other research institutions. There are also independent research collections, such as the Zoological State Collection Munich with over 20 million stuffed animals for research purposes. Public authorities such as national geological agencies or police units hold partly research collections too. The Natural History Museum in London - with one of the biggest collections worldwide - is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 70 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, palaeontology and zoology. Largest German Natural History Museum is the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, with over 30 million objects, including 9 million beetles and 275,000 jars with preserved in alcohol animals. Remarkable Earth Sciences collections:  Typical collection objects biology are fossils of organisms, in particular plants and animals, plants, and animals killed, and be protected from decay, for example, by drying or preparation, but also live plants, animals, bacteria and viruses. Plant collections are referred to as herbaria. Live plants are collected in the Botanical gardens, (trees ) in arboretums, aquariums, and partly in seedbanks, as well as e.g. algae from the Culture Collection of Algae Göttingen.