The University of Greifswald, founded in 1456, currently owns over 5.74 million collection items. The majority of these are collections of research data, items and documents from the natural sciences, which have been assembled since the late 18th century. A smaller part consists of teaching materials. In many cases, the collections are well integrated into research and academic teaching in the various scientific fields. The potential of the object collections for research, study and teaching has been recognised and is to be specifically secured and expanded for the future. Work began on the development of a university-wide infrastructure for the digitisation of the scientific collections in 2009.