The dataset of the lichen collection "Abramo Massalongo" preserved at the Natural History Museum of Venice

Background: Italy was one of the most active countries in the field of lichenology in the nineteenth century. Researchers such as Baglietto, De Notaris, Massalongo and Trevisan produced relevant herbaria, which are (at least in part) still preserved today. The digitisation of at least some of the collections is allowing the mobilisation of information from these specimens and aggregating the metadata in national and global repositories. New information: This dataset contains the metadata and images of 594 specimens for 490 infraspecific taxa belonging to 31 orders, 73 families and 218 genera, which were mostly collected in north-eastern Italy between 1845 and 1856. The digitisation was carried out following an image to data to web workflow. Specimens were digitally imaged, taking a panoramic view and one or more details. Data were standardised to Darwin Core, with image metadata standardised according to the Simple Multimedia extension.