[MattBlissett]

We have records of almost 270,000 preserved animal and plant specimens, for example leaves/flowers dried and pressed or whole insects most likely pinned down into a drawer.

This is still useful data, for example knowing that a species used to be present in a particular area, but if a specimen is destroyed then in the absence of a photograph of the specimen (and sometimes that's not enough) the original assertion can no longer be verified.

https://www.gbif.org/publisher/4205110f-3f0f-40d8-bd0f-2fa71...

(I work at GBIF, so I know this data exists, but otherwise I know nothing more than the article covers. I do not know what proportion of the total biodiversity collection 270,000 is, whether they were stored in this building, or whether there are images of them. As one example, they estimate 550,000 plant specimens, but share data of 42,000. That might well mean it isn't electronic, or it might mean it exists in a database but isn't yet shared as open data.)