Lichenized Fungi

The lichenological collection of the National Museum of Natural History in Sofia has been established in 1980s with the purchase of the personal collection of the first Bulgarian female lichenologist - Bozhana Zhelezova. The lichenological collection is registered in GRSciColl under the code [BG-NMNHS-MYC](https://scientific-collections.gbif.org/collection/0b347ac9-5b02-434a-b562-c48507a32243) and uses this code as a prefix for its catalogue numbers. Currently, it contains just Bozhana Zhelezova's collection (~3500 specimens) that consists mostly of specimens collected on the territory of Bulgaria, plus exchanged gift vouchers from Eurasia. Until 2020 the lichenological collection was stored in boxes in the museum's attic. In 2020 the entire collection, together with the vascular and bryophyte collection, was moved to a newly built depot, with proper air-conditioning or humidity control. The renovation of the depot was funded by DiSSco-BG. The herbarium of the museum, of which the collection is part, was registered in Index Herbariorum in 2021 under the acronym [BNHM](http://sweetgum.nybg.org/science/ih/herbarium-details/?irn=260118). The herbarium currently contains three separate collections — vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens.Digitisation of the herbarium specimens has been underway since 2022 as part of the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) in Bulgaria (DiSSCo-BG).The lichenological collection is now completely transcribed, almost completely georeferenced, and is currently going through the process of imaging and data quality checks.