SPNHC Connection – March 2023

The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) is a multidisciplinary organization composed of individuals who are interested in the development and preservation of natural history collections.

Table of Contents

President Report

Welcome to the latest edition of the SPNHC Connection Newsletter. At the 2022 meeting in Edinburgh it was an honour to officially take over the role of SPNHC President from Paul Mayer. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Paul for his hard work and dedication in supporting the work of the society as President, and particularly in his guiding the society through the challenges of the COVID pandemic during his tenure. I’d also like to thank our other outgoing Council members for their support and work for the society – Barbara Theirs as our outgoing Past President, outgoing Secretary Cindy Opitz and outgoing Members-at-Large Breda Zimkus and Anna Monfils. A big thank you to you all. In return we welcome to Council new President-elect Greg Watkins-Colwell, incoming Secretary Tiffany Adrain, and new Members-at-Large, Irene Finkelde and Jennifer Trimble.

As ever the backbone to the society is the work of the various committees and liaison groups, and again a big thank you goes to all the chairs and members of the various committees and groups, both past and present. We welcome onto Council the new committee chairs Sue Ryder (Membership Chair), Breda Zimkus (Legs & Regs Co-chair), Meghann Toner (IDEA Co-chair), Cindy Opitz (Conference Co-chair), and new organizational reps: Christina Byrd (AMMP Rep), Jutta Buschbom (CBD and CETAF Rep), Jean-Marc Gagnon (ANHMC Rep). My apologies if I have inadvertently missed anyone. The work of the various committees and liaison and partnership groups is more fully reported upon in the reports in this newsletter, the scope and diversity of which fully illustrates the wide range of activities that SPNHC members undertake supporting our wider collections community.

One of the key areas that clearly demonstrates the role SPNHC plays in linking across so many parts of our collections community is at the annual meeting where we see so many specialisms and kindred groups coming together to share knowledge, skills, and experiences. It was thus a great pleasure to see a return of the physical conference in Edinburgh last year. Despite the ongoing challenges of the COVID situation, the team worked incredibly hard to bring an excellent hybrid conference together that brought people from across the world into the heart of the historic city. A huge thank you goes to the whole organizing team for dealing with so many uncertainties and challenges to gather us together in such a positive and vibrant way.

For this year’s annual meeting we return to North America and a venue that has already hosted SPNHC twice previously, the California Academy of Sciences. The local organizing team, led by Laura Eklund and Moe Flannery, have been tackling the huge commitment of bringing together an international conference which will once again be a hybrid conference with both in-person and virtual options. Though the future seems exceptionally uncertain these days, the conference theme “Taking the Long View” encourages all of us to envision the future for our field, our collections, and ourselves. What lessons can we take from the past to better shape our future? What are our goals as a society and as individual organizations? Registration is now live and details are on the website, SPNHC 2023 | California Academy of Sciences. The conference is shaping up to be an excellent program of talks, workshops and social activities, and a big thank you goes to this year’s conference organizing team for all the hard work that has gone into putting this meeting together.

The Council and associated committees have been aiming to meet quarterly via Zoom to help improve communications and support moving society business forward throughout the year. In addition, the society has upgraded its Slack account, and many of the channels on that account are open to all members to join and use. The society also has both the Zoom and YouTube channel accounts which are there to support the society and its membership, so please do get in contact if you would like to use these accounts to host a relevant event or activity.

Following the 2022 ABM the SPNHC Council has been moving forward with several key tasks to support the work of the society. One area that had become a high priority was to look at ways to better support the administrative load of running the society, particularly around the key activities of handling membership and business systems. For this work, the Finance Committee was convened and met to discuss the possibility of hiring support for this work. As a result, we have now established a new membership and business office for the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections and have hired Christy Classi and her team to manage SPNHC membership and the business office website. This will significantly reduce the administrative burden on the society’s officers, and will enable us to operate more efficiently into the future.

Following this, the next task will be to review the finances of the society and to consider the impacts from the associated hiring costs along with other financial impacts, so that we can better support the activities of the society as a whole, e.g., developing new meetings and workshops, further enabling the work of the committees, and improving collaborations with kindred societies. This work will also link in with the members survey that is currently being finalized to help guide an overdue review of the 10-year strategy. The Long Range Planning Committee has been leading on this task, and it is anticipated the members survey will soon be shared with our community, after which, a subgroup will be established to review the results.

Another area undergoing review is in considering how we can better support the annual meeting. The
challenges and expense of hosting this meeting has grown considerably over the years, more so following the COVID pandemic, where factors such as offering a virtual attendance are now a required part of the conference. This brings additional organizational challenges and costs that now need to be factored into the meeting guidelines. The joint meeting, currently being developed with TDWG in Okinawa for 2024, is an important example of the increased agility required to deliver the annual meeting as it does not have a local hosting venue with an associated local organizing committee to rely on. It is hence being developed by a mixed committee, formed from the societies involved, and working with a conference organizer in the region. A recent update on the exciting progress made with the 2024 meeting is available in the Conference Committee report and at https://spnhc.org/update-on-the-proposed-joint-2024-conference-with-tdwg-in-okinawa-japan/. The experiences from this, and our current and other recent annual meetings, are all supporting how we guide future annual meetings.

The society is very much run by the community of which it is a part, driven by an immense amount of enthusiasm and passion from its members, and it continues to support numerous initiatives, both with our kindred societies, and from the wider collections community. We regularly have requests for support and collaboration, and the most recent examples of this have been from a number of NSF proposals for which the society has submitted letters of support. Many of these requests involve improving and sharing access to the collections and their data, and reflecting the ongoing drive in these areas in response to wider societal challenges. We are currently in a period of great change with the effects of climate change, along with the ongoing impacts of COVID, and the value of our work and collections to society has never been greater. Responding to this, the society is looking to evolve and move forward, and I encourage all to get involved in some way, such as taking part in the upcoming survey to help shape the way we work going forward, engaging with the activities of the committees and associated groups, sharing our work on social media, supporting our advertisers, or using the strength of the society to develop new initiatives and activities.

In the meantime, I look forward to seeing many of you in San Francisco in May at the annual meeting, and wish you all the very best for the coming year.

Julian Carter, SPNHC President

ANNUAL MEETING 2023

38th Annual SPNHC Meeting: “Taking the Long View”
San Francisco, California, and online
May 28 – June 2, 2023
Hosted by the California Academy of Sciences
https://www.calacademy.org/SPNHC-2023
Contact: SPNHC2023questions@calacademy.org

Join us in San Francisco, California – and online! – May 28 through June 2, 2023, for the 38^th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections. The conference theme “Taking the Long View” encourages all of us to envision the future of our field, our collections, and ourselves. What lessons can we take from the past to better shape our future? What are our goals as a society and as individual organizations? Hosted by the California Academy of Sciences and held at the Hilton Union Square in downtown San Francisco, SPNHC 2023 is sure to provide plenty of insight, inspiration and fun!

Program
The program for SPNHC 2023 begins with workshops on Monday, May 29, with the plenary session and committee meetings Tuesday, May 30. Symposia, talks and posters on a variety of collections-related topics will be presented Wednesday and Thursday, May 31-June 1. Friday morning, June 2, is the Annual Business Meeting conducted over brunch. This week-long program is bookended by field trips and punctuated by social events and collection tours.

Field Trips
Join us on Sunday, May 28, as we venture in and out of San Francisco for SPNHC field trips! Travel north of the city for wine tasting in historic Sonoma or a visit to the Petaluma Wildlife Museum capped with refreshments at the Indian Valley Brewing Co. Head west to learn about the important work being conducted at The Marine Mammal Center with a stop along the Pacific Ocean. Or learn more about your host city with a bused tour examining its geologic and natural history, or a walking tour exploring San Francisco’s much more recent history. Stay an extra day after the conference to join colleagues on a trip down the coast to the iconic Monterey Bay Aquarium on Saturday, June 3. More details are available on the SPNHC 2023 Field Trips site.

Workshops
Workshops will be held in-person Monday, May 29, at both the Hilton Union Square and the California Academy of Sciences with both full and half-day offerings covering an array of topics. Visit the Workshops page to learn more about these insightful and informative programs, and sign up for one or two during registration.

Events
SPNHC events are always a highlight! The 2023 meeting kicks off on Monday evening with crowd favorite Trivia Night. Tuesday evening is the Ice Breaker at the California Academy of Sciences. Wednesday join the SPNHC EPC Networking Luncheon (formerly known as the Emerging Professionals Luncheon) to meet established colleagues or support those new to the profession. Thursday evening don’t miss the annual banquet with dinner and dancing – a SPNHC tradition! Friday morning join us at the Annual Business Meeting where we will recap and discuss Society business over brunch.

Collection Tours
One of the most highly anticipated events at any SPNHC conference is the behind-the-scenes look at our host institution’s collections. Come see some of the 45M+ specimens housed at the California Academy of Sciences on Friday afternoon. Or cross the Bay and visit the collections of the University of California, Berkeley’s Berkeley Natural History Museums. Be sure to sign up for collection tours during registration.

Venue
SPNHC 2023 will be held at the Hilton Union Square in downtown San Francisco within easy walking of restaurants, theaters, museums, shopping, public transportation, and the world-famous cable car.

We’ve reserved a block of rooms for SPNHC attendees at a special discounted rate. Explore San Francisco for a few days before or after the conference for the same great room rate.

Host
The California Academy of Sciences was established in 1853 has grown to include an aquarium, planetarium and natural history museum all under one living roof. The Academy’s Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability houses the research collections and programs and is at the forefront of efforts to understand two of the most important topics of our time: the nature and future of life on Earth. With over 45 million scientific specimens spanning eight disciplines, these collections provide one of the best records of life on Earth, both now and in the past.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Notice of 2023 Annual Business Meeting 

The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections will hold its 38th Annual Business Meeting on Friday, June 2, 2023, at 17:00 UTC (10:00 PST) — I think this time is incorrect — in-person and via Zoom, as part of the Annual Meeting hosted by the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, USA.  https://www.calacademy.org/spnhc-2023

COMMITTEE REPORTS

Best Practices

In collaboration with iDigBio, the Best Practices Committee held a virtual SPNHC wiki edit-a-thon in November 2022. A total of 9 community members attended, contributing 30 hours to topic research and wiki edits. Landing pages were created to organize large topics, new content and web resources were added to several wiki pages, and authorized Storage-at-a-Glance sections were uploaded from the Preventive Conservation: Collection Storage book (Elkin and Norris eds., 2020). Based on the success and progress made during this event, plans are underway to create regular virtual working sessions to enrich SPNHC wiki content and discoverability. The committee recognizes Erica Krimmel for her initiative, coordination, and contributions to facilitating this event.

For members planning to attend this year’s meeting in San Francisco, iDigBio and the Best Practices Committee will continue this joint effort in person by hosting a half-day SPNHC wiki edit-a-thon workshop (“Capturing Community Expertise”) the morning of May 29. Like the recent virtual workshop, the aim of this session is to improve and expand SPNHC wiki content. No prior wiki experience is necessary, and we invite anyone interested in contributing to this resource to join us – whether to add or augment collections content relating to your specific field, or helping us with some pre-packaged projects that do not require discipline knowledge. Following a brief training, workshop attendees will participate in formatting and finalizing existing draft content, uploading media, filling in information gaps, linking web resources, and generating new page content. In addition to participant-generated themes, the following topics represent areas we hope to enhance on the wiki: digitization including digital imaging (especially expanding on 3D imaging content), data aggregation, database migration, data licensing, and the use of
persistent identifiers in natural history collections. We invite you to register for this workshop and extend our gratitude to iDigBio for sponsoring participants. If you are unable to attend the workshop but have resources or (draft) content to contribute to the SPNHC wiki, please contact the committee Chairs.

Finally, the Best Practices Committee is pleased to announce the return of the “Back to Basics: Museum Techniques Skillshare” symposium at this year’s meeting in San Francisco. The symposium invites presenters to share curation technique tutorials, including tips, workflows, and how best practice methods are applied in different institutional settings. In particular, we hope to capture some of the specific steps involved in everyday museum tasks that are often elusive to track down in collection management literature (think of all the crowdsourcing NHCOLL listserv calls for “How do you?…”). The symposium is open to collection stewards from all disciplines and career-stages and we encourage abstracts on a diversity of topics. Copies of each talk along with key points will be preserved on the SPNHC wiki following the conference in an effort to build an accessible tutorial resource. We look forward to your submissions (due February 6).

Respectfully Submitted,
Emily Braker and Genevieve Tocci, Co-chairs

Biodiversity Crisis Response

In 2022, the activities of the Biodiversity Crisis Response Committee in its plenary focused on the organization of two events, the committee’s symposium at SPNHC 2022 in Edinburgh, and a workshop at the intersection of collections data and conservation stakeholders. The committee’s working group on Regional Diversity applied for and was awarded a GBIF Capacity Enhancement Support Program grant, while members interested in developing SPNHC’s partnership with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) continued to follow the negotiations and intersessional work leading up to the convention’s Conference Of the Parties (COP15) and its outcomes.

The committee organized a well-attended symposium at the SPNHC annual meeting, held in Edinburgh, UK, with the title “Mobilizing specimens for fact-based conservation in the face of a global biodiversity crisis.” Sixteen speakers from four continents presented their work and perspectives on how natural science collections, their specimens, staff and associated partners and services are already supporting, and can further increase their impact in conservation action, sustainable management, education and capacity development for the protection of global biodiversity. 

Throughout the year, committee members discussed a workshop bringing members of the collections community as data providers and repositories together with potential data users focused on conservation sciences, action and management. These efforts are now taking shape in the form of a symposium and associated workshop at this year’s annual conference SPNHC 2023, in San Francisco. Both explore meta-networking (building connections among societies and organizations) through their committees with a focus on biodiversity conservation. Symposium speakers from several continents highlight successful collaboration for biodiversity conservation by networks of organizations. The workshop provides space and time for participants to get to know each other, their thoughts and work, and in this way connect in a conversation cafe setting. We hope to see you in both the symposium and workshop!

The aim of the Regional Diversity Working Group within the committee is to connect with colleagues worldwide, specifically in the Global South, to raise awareness of scientific collections, their work, services and conservation efforts that are situated in a wide range of sociocultural and environmental contexts, and to increase their visibility, international involvement and their representation in SPNHC, as well as committee membership. Building on a pilot campaign in Ecuador in 2021 and in collaboration with GBIF’s Global Registry of Scientific Collections team, members of the working group brought together a partnership of eight organizations from Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala, Germany and Canada, applied for and received a CESP grant from GBIF. The partnership organized a very successful weekly “Connecting Collections” workshop series in September, with over 100 participants at each session; many of whom attended multiple, if not all sessions. While the project was terminated early due to administrative obstacles, work continues on a more limited scale. Further, we acknowledge that funding at the cross-continental level is challenging, and we will take this opportunity to collectively brainstorm the most inclusive, diverse and productive ways to engage at a global scale. 

Partnership building for global biodiversity conservation is a recurring topic within the committee and also in the areas of data infrastructure-building and science policy engagement. Several committee members are active in a working group of international partners for the promotion of the “Digital Extended Specimen” concept, and its implementation, as next generation infrastructure for biodiversity data at the global level. In addition, in early 2021, members of the committee initiated that SPNHC receive official observer status with the CBD, and the society’s CBD representative is one of the co-chairs of the committee (Jutta Buschbom). The experiences gained during two years of accompanying the sessions and negotiations of the CBD, as well as the observations made during COP15, provide a good foundation as well as rich material for further discussions and developments (please see the report of the CBD representative for more information).

Respectfully submitted,
Jutta Buschbom and Libby Ellwood, Co-chairs

Bylaws
The Bylaws Committee is responsible for the continued development of the Society Bylaws, monitoring society activities to ensure agreement with the bylaws, and to keep the SPNHC Leadership Manual updated. See https://spnhc.org/what-spnhc-does/governance/leadership-manual/

Respectfully submitted,
Paul Mayer, Chair

Conservation
The Conservation Committee invites conservators, collections managers, and any others concerned with the physical preservation of specimens and holistic preventive care of collections. We work on projects on an as-needed basis, such as the survey and subsequent writing of a best practice for managing food in collection-holding institutions. Several of our members are involved in the Materials Working Group, a community of collection care, conservation, natural and applied scientists, as well as allied professionals united in developing guidelines and best practices for selecting, evaluating, and disseminating materials used in collection care. In recent years we have focused on providing conservation workshops at annual meetings to help train the larger SPNHC community. If you would like to join the committee and find your conservation community, email Chair Fran Ritchie. 

The Conservation Committee would like to highlight a symposium at the upcoming SPNHC meeting: Specimen Conservation for Non-Conservators. The presentations are aimed at providing solutions for conservation-related projects in order to empower non-conservators to preserve the collections, and to recognize when it is appropriate to ask for help. Fellow conservators may also learn new tips and tricks from the talks. 

Respectfully submitted,
Fran Ritchie, Chair

Emerging Professionals

This spring (through at least May 2023), the Emerging Professionals Committee will meet on the first Friday of every month via Zoom at 11 am CST (GMT -6). Please join us as we continue to prepare for SPNHC 2023 in San Francisco and work on other committee initiatives. Contact either of the co-chairs, Kevin (kjkrajcir@gmail.com) or Jessie (nakanojk@si.edu), to be added to the email list and receive the Zoom link.

Otherwise, be sure to register for the conference in San Francisco this year! We look forward to seeing everyone there and hope to be providing some conference prep materials for emerging professionals and first-time attendees. When registering, be sure to sign up for the newly-titled “SPNHC Networking Luncheon” hosted by the Emerging Professionals Committee. We changed the name of the former “Emerging Professionals Luncheon” to ensure that everyone feels welcome to attend; we would like emerging professionals at all career stages, mentors, established professionals, first-time conference attendees, etc., to attend this event!

As always, please be sure to follow us on Twitter (@SPNHCEPC) as well as join our Facebook Group (SPNHC Emerging Professionals Group) and Slack channel (#spnhc-epc channel under the SPNHC Slack). Please reach out with any other concerns, questions, or ideas that you may have. Stay well!

Respectfully submitted,
Kevin Krajcir and Jessie Nakano, Co-chairs

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access

The Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Committee continues to focus on strengthening the society’s goals to create a safe, diverse, and welcoming virtual and physical spaces. The IDEA Committee met online quarterly throughout 2022 and in person at the SPNHC conference in Edinburgh, UK, this year. At that conference committee meeting, there were approximately 30 attendees, and the main points raised were:

1. Creating realistic goals for the IDEA committee by focusing on a select few priorities for the year and working more closely with other committees to complete initiatives and reduce silos that are formed within committees.
2. Including questions in a society-wide survey that identify barriers that prevent people in the field from participating in SPNHC and the greater natural history collections community, including questions focused on education level, location, disabilities, and other demographics.

In the fall, IDEA supported the Long-Range Planning Committee during their planning for a community-wide survey covering a variety of subjects. Vanessa and Meghann created a list of questions that were then provided to the IDEA committee to review. The information from the survey will help to guide the Society moving forward.

In October, IDEA Committee members Genevieve Tocci and Ron Eng agreed to attend the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) IDEA Conference 2.0. They reported back to the committee a summary of the conference. We want to thank them for representing SPNHC at this meeting. The conference is the second year that AIBS has brought together various scientific Societies to build a movement surrounding diversity and inclusion issues.

Vanessa Delnavaz, Anna Monfils, Molly Phillips, and Meghann Toner began working with a team from the National Museum of Natural History-Smithsonian Institution (NMNH) to lead a Biodiversity Sciences Accessibility Workshop that the society and NMNH would co-host. The workshop is funded by two NSF grants and will focus on providing an opportunity for college students from underrepresented communities to explore a career in the biodiversity sciences.

Moving to 2023, the committee hopes to work on an official Code of Conduct for the Society. We will continue to work as a committee to define a set of goals, including an anonymous virtual box for society members to report any issues or comments. We look forward to working with other SPNHC committees to make inclusion, diversity, equity, and access a foundation for the society.

Respectfully submitted,
Vanessa Delnavaz and Meghann Toner, Co-chairs

Legislation and Regulations

The SPNHC Legislation and Regulations Committee asked the SPNHC membership and NHCOLL-L
community to assist us in identifying the regulations that they most often deal with, the agencies that
they interact with, and the issues that cause the most concern to them. The results of this survey will be shared in a symposium organized by the committee at the 2023 annual meeting in San Francisco, and it will assist us in prioritizing future committee work. The symposium, entitled “Understanding the regulatory landscape for specimens and biomonitoring” focuses on the complex and constantly changing regulatory landscape for research collections, which can lead to major issues for those collecting and managing biodiversity material. The goal is to identify the regulatory agencies associated with recent challenges and foster discussion to facilitate a common understanding of how biodiversity collections are collected, managed, and used in research.

Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity met in Montreal at the Conference of the Parties (COP)
15 and agreed to develop a system for sharing of monetary benefits resulting from the utilization of
Digital Sequence Information (DSI). While DSI-data should continue to be shared via INSDC databases in
the public domain for non-commercial research and specifically biodiversity research, tagging INSDC-
records with information on the geographical origin should be encouraged. In this regard, the COP
parties acknowledge the FAIR and CARE principles and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) “Recommendation on Open Science”. The CBD parties will establish a
multilateral mechanism for benefit-sharing from the use of DSI through a global fund; the specific details
will be developed as part of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework between now and COP 16 in
2024.

Respectfully submitted,
Breda Zimkus and Dirk Neumann, Co-chairs

Long Range Planning
The main focus of the committee this year has been to produce a survey to send to members to understand the views and requirements of the membership. The results of the survey will set the
basis of the review and establishing the future direction of the society. The SPNHC strategic plan was
formally adopted in 2013, so is overdue for revision and updating.

Following the annual meeting in Edinburgh, Suzanne Ryder contacted all the committee chairs to ask if they had any questions to be included in the survey that would be useful to their committees going
forward. These were collated and included in the survey. The two co-chairs met with the SPNHC
president to go through the survey before sending to membership. It was decided that the survey
would be sent out following the launch of the new membership database.

After discussions at the LPR Committee meeting in Edinburgh, some changes were
recommended to help the society run more efficiently and to support the many committee chairs
that generously volunteer their time. It was agreed that an administrator be employed to help the
council to perform the task needed to run this growing society. This was agreed, and Christy Classi
has been employed. This support has already made a significant improvement to society’s ability to
provide for the natural history community.

Agreed actions for 2022-2023

• Strategic Plan and members survey
  — Send the survey for all members to ask what direction the members would like the society to go.
  — Analyze the results of the survey.
  — Form a small sub-group to work on the strategic planning.
  — Organise a strategic planning meeting to develop and updated strategic plan for the society.
  — Write the new strategic plan ready for approval at 2024 SPNHC ABM.
• Review the current support for local organizing committee hosting the annual SPNHC conference.
  — Work with the SPNHC council to find a way to attract and support potential hosts for the conference. The current structure was set up more than 20 years ago and does not address the needs and financial risks the LOC faces when they organize this large event.

Respectfully submitted,
Suzanne Ryder and Greg Watkins-Colwell, Co-Chairs

Membership

It has been a very exciting year for membership with the employment of Christy Classi to take over much of the administration for the society and the establishment of a new membership and business office. Tiffany Adrain has worked closely with Christy and they have already made great progress, for instance, you will have noticed the launch of our new membership database at https://spnhc.wildapricot.org. Please use these pages to view the online membership directory, renew your membership, update your contact information, or make a donation. The new platform allows us to collect, and therefore, measure more demographic information than has been possible before, which we hope will inform the society of membership needs and priorities.

With the introduction of the membership and business office, this of course means that the focus of
the Membership Committee will change. Hopefully, it will give this group the opportunity to
concentrate on different areas of membership. The role of this committee will include:

• Liaise with C. Classi and help with any enquiries sent to office@spnhc.org.
• Report and analyse membership statistics.
• Send reminders to membership at the end of the calendar year for membership renewal.
• Work to increase/retain membership internationally.
• Advertise the society either via physical booth at conferences and workshops, or virtually.
• Work with the other committees to meet the goals of the society and serve our membership.

Memberships statistics
The number of members currently is 572, which is a little down from last year. I hope this is because
you haven’t renewed yet and by the middle of February the total number of members will exceed
those of last year.

With the new membership directory in place, for the first time we can easily see the geographical
range of this international society and the distribution of our membership. The highest
concentration of members remains in North America with a growing membership in Europe and
Australasia. SPNHC membership is currently represented in 26 countries. The chart below highlights
that we still have regions of the world that are not represented, most notably Africa.

Promotion
We will continue to promote SPNHC at conferences by advertising in conference literature and
exhibiting the Membership Booth. If you have a suggestion for exhibiting the in-person or virtual
Membership Booth at upcoming conferences, please contact Suzanne Ryder
(membership@spnhc.org). You may be eligible for full complimentary conference registration. The
committee is happy to hear from anyone with connections at future SPNHC annual meeting
locations who can help us widen the membership reach of the society.

Note from chair and thanks.
I enter the role of Membership Chair with enthusiasm and a sense of relief after the fabulous work
Tiffany has done. Tiffany and members of the SPNHC council have worked with Christy to set up the
business and membership office so the task ahead doesn’t feel too daunting. I would like to take this
opportunity to sincerely thank Tiffany on behalf of the society members and council for the
incredible amount of time and effort she has put into the membership committee for the last 12
years as committee chair!

Respectfully submitted,
Suzanne Ryder, Chair

Publications

Collection Forum
Volume 35 of Collection Forum (2021) is now published online at https://meridian.allenpress.com/collection-forum. This is the first issue to be compiled under our new model of accepting submissions year-round, and encompasses manuscripts accepted for publication in the journal following the peer-review process over the years 2021 and 2022. Articles are made available in digital format as soon as final proofs are in place, and the volume will close once a sufficient number of contributions have been published online, after which the print version will become available. Articles in the most recent issue of Collection Forum are available online only to current members, becoming openly available to all once superseded by a subsequent issue.

The current issue hosts five articles on various topics that are now available online, with a sixth nearing online publication at the time of this writing, following which the volume will close. Two manuscripts are already in the review process to begin the next volume and will be joined by any new submissions in the near future to form Volume 36.

Immediate access to the online journal’s full range of content— and for those members whose subscription level includes it, to periodic print issues—is provided through society membership. In addition to the change in publication mode described above, Collection Forum is also now accepting short communications and technical notes as well as certain book reviews and submissions for the Leaflets series. Publication as part of the society’s official journal will make such material easier to cite, more readily accessible, and increase the content available for publication each year. Editorial review of such submissions and decisions concerning the most appropriate format for publication will be handled in collaboration with the leaflet, book review, and newsletter managers as detailed below.

Members who present at the SPNHC annual meeting are strongly encouraged to submit manuscripts for consideration, particularly those who receive travel awards and support from the society. For inquiries about new submissions, please email the editors at editor@spnhc.org.

Mariel Campbell serves as Chief Editor of Collection Forum. Scott Rufolo is the Managing Editor. Mariana di Giacomo, Shelley James, and Genevieve Tocci continue to volunteer their time as Assistant Editors.

For questions about online access to Collection Forum at the journal website at https://meridian.allenpress.com/collection-forum, please contact the editor. Address changes for print copies should be sent to membership@spnhc.org. Please confirm and update membership at https://spnhc.wildapricot.org/join-us or contact the SPNHC Treasurer at treasurer@spnhc.org.

SPNHC Leaflets
The SPNHC Leaflets are a series of single-topic, short papers on various technical aspects of collections care, management, preservation and conservation. Produced in the past as stand-alone references, a typical SPNHC Leaflets contribution describes and suggests practical means for solving a technical problem or issue. These “how-to” guides are designed to serve as training and education tools for natural history museum collection professionals and students in museum studies programs and will now be published as contributions to Collection Forum. If you are interested in publishing a Leaflets piece on natural history collections, please contact Breda Zimkus at bzimkus@oeb.harvard.edu or the managing editor of Collection Forum at editor@spnhc.org.

Book Reviews
In-depth book reviews with extensive content critique will be considered for publication in Collection Forum. Shorter book reviews profiling recent publications that would be of interest to members may be submitted for publication in the SPNHC Connection newsletter. For more information concerning these two book review formats, to suggest a title for review, or to submit a review, please contact Lisa Goldberg at lgoldberg@lgpreservation.com or the managing editor at editor@spnhc.org.

SPNHC Connection
SPNHC Connection editor, Liath Appleton and assistant editor, Lori Schlenker continue their hard work to publish the society newsletter. Liath also serves as the SPNHC webmaster. For any newsletter submissions, please email Liath at newsletter@spnhc.org. To access SPNHC Connection, please go to the Publications tab at https://spnhc.org/spnhc-connection/.

SPNHC Books
Our newest book, Best Practices for the Preservation of Wet Collections by Dirk Neumann, Julian Carter, John E. Simmons, and Oliver Crimmen, was released in the fall of 2022. It is available for purchase through https://www.universityproducts.com/ or through https://archetype.co.uk/. Other SPNHC book titles continue to be available through University Products at https://www.universityproducts.com/. The 2019 volume Preventive Conservation: Collection Storage, edited by Lisa Elkin and Christopher A. Norris, is being sold through University Products and through the AIC website at https://store.culturalheritage.org, where AIC members will receive a 15% discount off the $95 purchase price. An eBook of this title is in progress. Please contact editor@spnhc.org for more information.

Journal and Newsletter Access
A reminder that the newsletter and past issues of the journal are available online at https://spnhc.org/. More recent issues of Collection Forum published since 2014 are accessed through https://collectionforum.org/, which requires a separate member login (see above for information on Meridian site access). Many thanks to Membership Online Access Assistant, Sara Ketelsen for coordinating with the SPNHC Membership Chair and with Allen Press to assist with member access to Collection Forum. If you or your institution require assistance with accessing the journal, please contact editor@spnhc.org.

SPNHC Publication Archives
Special thanks to Carol Kelloff for her recent hard work to update the https://spnhc.org/ website with complete scans of older issues of the journal and to put together a reference library of all current and former SPNHC publications at the Smithsonian. If you have older print copies of SPNHC books or journal issues that are currently missing from spnhc.org, and you would be willing to donate and/or provide scanned copies of these publications, please contact Carol at kelloffc@si.edu or at editor@spnhc.org.
For any questions about the Publications Committee or to volunteer, please use one of the following contact emails:
Collection Forum (Scott Rufolo, Managing Editor): editor@spnhc.org
SPNHC Connection (Liath Appleton, Editor): newsletter@spnhc.org
SPNHC Leaflets (Breda Zimkus, Editor): bzimkus@oeb.harvard.edu
Book Reviews: lgoldberg@lgpreservation.com
There are positions open for additional volunteers to serve as Associate Editors for Collection Forum.

Respectfully Submitted,
Mariel Campbell and Scott Rufolo, Co-Chairs

Recognition and Grants
The Recognition and Grants Committee is charged with promoting and reviewing grants that the society can confer to support conference travel, innovative projects, and awards that recognize individuals, groups and commercial entities, who through excellence promote or advance the aims of the society. These include:

• THE CAROLYN ROSE AWARD
• THE PRESIDENT’S AWARD
• HONORARY MEMBERSHIP
• SPECIAL SERVICE AWARD
• THE VENDOR RECOGNITION AWARD
• THE EARLY CAREER AWARD
• THE FABER INNOVATION GRANT
• The FITZGERALD TRAVEL GRANT
• The CHRISTINE ALLEN TRAVEL GRANT
• The JEAN DEMOUTHE TRAVEL GRANT

The committee is currently deliberating this year’s awards and they will be announced via NHCOLL-L and the next newsletter.

Recognition and Grants Committee will meet this year during the annual SPNHC meeting. We encourage you to please join us at the conference. The committee is always looking for ways to encourage more applications for SPNHC awards and grants.

Respectfully submitted,
Paul Mayer, Chair

Web and Social Media

The Web and Social Media Committee welcomes anyone interested in helping out with the SPNHC website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Please join us at our next committee meeting in San Francisco for further information and how you can help.

SESSIONAL COMMITTEE REPORTS

Collection Theft and Security Monitoring of Collections
This committee is charged with investigating, identifying, and developing best practices for preventive measures that secure collections and using communication channels to alert the community of thefts and to monitor for the recovery of lost specimens. Breda Zimkus created a google document which is available to members (see link in email).

During the 38th SPNHC Annual Meeting the committee will meet and the committee will chair a symposium entitled Collection Theft and Security-Monitoring of Collections.

Respectfully submitted,
Paul Mayer, Chair

US Federal Collections

This committee has reconvened after a brief hiatus and has met a few times since August 2022 to gather input from community members. We plan to continue to meet quarterly, including at the annual SPNHC meeting in summer of 2023. Through these meetings, the committee has identified areas where communication between collections and federal agencies could be improved. This committee’s current goal is to ensure that information is effectively shared in a manner that benefits all parties involved, and we are especially thankful for the participation from our federal partners.

The committee’s current priorities are: (1) the nature of repository agreements with the different agencies, (2) potential sources of funding to support work on federal collections, and (3) finding ways to make digitized federal collections more discoverable in online databases and data aggregators.

As a committee, we strongly recommend active participation through meetings and public comment to gather a diverse range of perspectives and opinion; utilizing all available channels to share information including online platforms, in-person meetings, and collaborative workspaces; and the fostering of strong relationships with resource officers and other stakeholders in federal offices to facilitate ongoing communication and information sharing.

Respectfully submitted,
Janaki Krishna, Carrie A. Eaton and Greg Liggett, Co-chairs

REPRESENTATIVE REPORTS

American Society of Plant Taxonomists
I am currently serving as the ex-officio member of the ASPT Systematics Collections Committee. With the ongoing war in Ukraine, the Systematics Collections Committee contacted all herbaria in Ukraine to offer our support. The committee has been able to provide financial support to herbaria in Ukraine to either protect their collections in place (as for LWS) or to move their collections to safer locations (CWU). In an effort to provide more awareness to the broader herbarium community, the committee has been
working with the ASPT webmaster to add information about the Herbarium Emergency Fund to the ASPT website.

The annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists is scheduled for July 22-26, in Boise, Idaho, United States, as part of the Botany2023 meeting. Similar to the previous year, the meeting is being planned as a hybrid approach, primarily as an in-person event but accompanied by a virtual option. Symposia and Special Lectures will be presented in person. Posters will also be presented in person, but presenters will now have the option to upload their poster to the online platform for the online version of the conference. Details of the conference are still evolving. Abstract submissions are due April 3, 2023.

Respectfully submitted,
Mare Nazaire, SPNHC Representative to ASPT

Association for Materials and Methods in Paleontology

AMMP has been busy these past months planning and organizing its next annual meeting which is being
hosted by the Burke Museum of Natural History in Seattle, Washington, April 4-8, 2023. The meeting will
be hybrid with in-person and virtual accessibility. Platform presentations will be pre-recorded and live,
and posters will be available on the virtual platform and in-person. There will be a live-streamed Q&A
session from presenters at a designated time. All workshops will be offered for in-person attendance
with select workshops offered for virtual attendees.
More information about the annual meeting can be found at this website:
https://paleomethods.org/Annual-Meeting

Respectfully submitted,
Christina Byrd, SPNHC representative to AMMP

Association of Registrars and Collections Specialists

The 2022 ARCS virtual conference, Sustainability360, took place December 5-9, 2022, with a variety of presentations on sustainability issues in museum collections and numerous opportunities for members to virtually meet in small groups. Some of the presentations will be made available on the ARCS website over the course of the next year, leading up to the next ARCS in-person meeting, which is planned for November 7-10, 2023, in Montreal.

Three of the 2022 ARCS Webinar series are now available on the ARCS website https://www.arcsinfo.org/programs/past-webinars). These are Self-Care and Self-Advocacy for Museum Professionals; Copyright Across Borders; and Found in Collection & Old Loans. Recordings of the ever-popular ARCSchat series of audio records are available at https://www.arcsinfo.org/programs/arcschat and on the ARCS YouTube Channel.

ARCS members can now access a Resource Kit for information related to best practices in registration and collection care on the website. The Resource Kit is maintained by the ARCS Professional Development Resource Task Force.

Other website resources include the ARCS Forum for questions and comments about registration and collections management; and job postings on the Career Center; and a searchable listing of collections managers and registrars available for contract work (https://www.arcsinfo.org/opportunities/on-contract).

Respectfully submitted,
John E. Simmons, SPNHC representative to ARCS

Biodiversity Information Standards

The 2022 annual meeting of Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG), was hosted by Pensoft Publishers (pensoft.net) in Sofia, Bulgaria, from October 17-21, with both in-person and remote participation. The hybrid conference details can be found at: www.tdwg.org/conferences/2022/ . The Interest and Task Group Working Sessions were held virtually November 7-10, focusing on standards development (www.tdwg.org/conferences/2022/working-sessions/). You can check out the abstracts for talks and posters along with the presentations themselves in most cases as they were published as a Proceedings in the journal Biodiversity Information Science and Standards
(BISS: biss.pensoft.net/collection/384/). You can also watch many of the presentations via the TDWG YouTube channel (search for TDWG). The virtual environment combined with a low registration fee made TDWG accessible to many who would not normally be able to attend the conference including many SPNHC members!

For those of you who are new to TDWG or are interested in learning more please visit our newly refreshed website featuring our new logo, which is integrated with our GitHub repository (https://www.tdwg.org/). TDWG also manages an open access journal called Biodiversity Information Science and Standards or BISS referenced above. This journal serves two purposes, first to publish the TDWG Proceedings of abstracts for their annual conference, and second, a forum for biodiversity informaticians to publish articles on
biodiversity standards, methods, guidelines, models and applications. If you have content relevant to these topics please consider publishing in BISS. With specific relevance to SPNHC, members of the Natural Collections Descriptions Interest Group have submitted the new “Collections Description” data standard, now called the Latimer Core, for describing collections of natural history materials at the collection level (https://www.tdwg.org/community/cd/), which is now in the review process. Related to this, another task group is developing a Minimal Information about a Digital Specimen (MIDS)
standard to more consistently “measure” digitization progress (https://www.tdwg.org/community/cd/mids/). Also, there is increasing discussion and engagement on curation attribution standards (https://www.tdwg.org/community/attribution/). As I continue to stress: “the standards being evaluated by TDWG, and the applications that implement them, have a direct impact on many SPNHC members involved with specimen data capture, management and curation.”

In 2023, TDWG is again being realistic in its assessment of COVID-related travel impacts and will hold a hybrid conference with in-person attendance in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, October 9-13, 2023. For more information please see the conference website (https://www.tdwg.org/conferences/2023/) and consider joining us!

Finally, if you are interested in biodiversity standards, I would urge you to become a member of TDWG and contribute. It takes a wide range of skill sets and knowledge to produce standards and all are welcome.

Respectfully submitted,
James Macklin, SPNHC Representative to TDWG

Collections Stewardship Professional Network

The former Collections Stewardship Professional Network CSAAM listserv ceased operation on June 30, 2022. Queries and discussions for CSAAM have been moved to the Museum Junction site on the American Alliance of Museums webpage (https://community.aam-us.org/home?_ga=2.101423745.1475842526.1672850351-1543704782.1671472998). Museum Junction does not require AAM membership for access.

A new independent communication network, not affiliated with AAM or with CSAAM, was opened in June 2022, to support continued dialogue about collections care and management issues and professional development and job opportunities. The Museum Collections Care (MCC) listserv is open to anyone interested at https://groups.google.com/g/museum-collections-care.

Recordings of several webinars organized by CSAAM are available to AAM members via the CSAAM web page, including Managing Copyright Issues from Acquisition to Exhibition, and Decolonizing Museum Collections: A Conversation between Colleagues in the Field (https://www.aam-us.org/professional-networks/collections-stewardship/).

Respectfully submitted,
John E. Simmons, SPNHC representative to the CSAAM

Convention on Biological Diversity

2022 was an important year for global biodiversity conservation. On December 19, all 196 parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and its supplementary documents, including the monitoring framework. The GBF will guide conservation and sustainable management decisions and practices at all three levels, including ecosystems, species and genetic diversity, for the next 30 years in a whole-of-society approach. The adoption is testimony to the will and capacity of human societies worldwide to work together and find agreement despite strong concerns, incompatible positions and a global political context of rising conflict.

COP15 was an unexpectedly informative and insightful experience from my perspective as SPNHC representative to the CBD. Over the past two years, the 3 to 12 plus hours, on over 70 days of virtually attending the meetings of the CBD bodies, paid off during the Conference of the Parties (COP). By now I am recognizing many key members of the Secretariat of the CBD, main negotiators, and observer representatives, and have gained experience with the processes and “usual” dynamics of the negotiations. The intensity and increasing pressure during the COP provided a first idea about the different approaches that, in combination, can lead to the successful adaptation of a multilateral treaty of such size and complexity.

A positive example of a successful negotiation process that led to a decision reflecting shared stand points is the process towards finding agreement on access to and the sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of Digital Sequence Information (DSI). The process could not be finished, yet the current decision provides an important stepping stone to build on in subsequent negotiations. Here, negotiators, the SCBD, major observer groups, and the wide range of involved observers and stakeholders, share the conviction to continue to talk to each other, work together and find a solution.

Another negotiation process with direct connections to the natural sciences collections community intriguingly, however, was not successful. A very late negotiation start and then clash between parties from the Global South and key actors of the Global North resulted in the removal of knowledge management from its dedicated decision on “Knowledge management and the clearing-house mechanism” (cp. to the original draft). This is quite an exceptional situation, taking into account that across the GBF negotiations, at least some agreement and step forward generally was found.

The overall outcome is that well into the current monitoring period, the GBF will not be supported by infrastructures for primary biodiversity data that are integrated into its workflows or into a comprehensive knowledge management system. The coming two years will be very important to restart the communication and negotiation process with the goal of adopting a strong decision on analog and digital data infrastructures and knowledge management at COP16. As it stands, natural science collection and digital infrastructure development will have to deal with limited political support and an inaccessibility of potential funding opportunities arising from the GBF and its monitoring framework. What can be learned for the upcoming years from the DSI negotiation process is that the engagement and concerted efforts of involved stakeholders is essential. Negotiators do listen carefully, and embrace facts and knowledge-based information from experts and experienced observer communities.

The Science Policy Interface (SPI) connecting us as a collections-based community to the CBD and UN-level processes is established, and represents several important stakeholder groups. GBIF as an Intergovernmental Organization (IGO), is integrated into the UN environment. It contributes to promoting the biodiversity sciences and infrastructures in a different role than the Consortium of Scientific Partners on Biodiversity, a group of national-level technical and scientific institutions. SPNHC as an observer organization complements them by representing the community at the level of individual collection staff and researchers. It has, in certain respects, more freedom in interactions with the policy process, and is more restricted in others. All three community groups are needed for successfully building relationships with the wide range of actors in the SPI and communicating the contributions that natural science collections offer to the monitoring framework of the GBF.

Looking forward, across the community we are called to strengthen our engagement at the intersection with policy makers and to more closely coordinate and collaborate. Concrete goals are to build support and momentum for strong data infrastructures and knowledge management for the GBF, and communicating their indispensable importance for global biodiversity conservation.

Respectfully submitted,
Jutta Buschbom, SPNHC Representative to CBD

Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities

The past year was characterized by regular and dedicated interactions between SPNHC and CETAF members and committees. The SPNHC annual meeting took place in Edinburgh, and as a result, many European colleagues attended and interacted with their colleagues from abroad. Likewise, the international SPNHC community was reconnecting again personally with European colleagues.

SPNHC members active in the Best Practices, Publications, Web and Social Media, and Biodiversity Crisis Response Committees, and colleagues from the CETAF ePublishing working group, took the opportunity offered by SPNHC 2022 to meet in person. Together with Connie Rinaldo from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, we met throughout 2022 to jointly work on two best practice recommendations that are supported by our three organizations.

The first recommendation, “Joint statement on best practices for the citation of authorities of scientific names in taxonomy by CETAF, SPNHC and BHL,” under the leadership of Laurence Benichou, co-chair of the CETAF ePublishing working group, was published in September 2022 in RIO (https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.8.e94338). It is receiving wide interest both by researchers and infrastructure developers.

A second statement will be focusing on a set of recommendations to foster free access to and open reusability of scientific data present in scholarly publications. In preparation, Laurence Benichou and I organized, together with Mariko Kageyama (SPNHC), Donat Agosti (Plazi) and Willi Egloff (Plazi), a well-attended workshop during TDWG 2022, in October 2022 in Sofia, Bulgaria. A draft recommendation text will be developed into a publication in 2023.

Many more connections between CETAF and SPNHC exist that are initiated and maintained by individuals and committees from both organizations. In these collaborations SPNHC is recognized as a competent cooperation partner that is bringing together the expertise and energy of individuals and organizations in its active network of members.

Respectfully submitted,
Jutta Buschbom, SPNHC Representative to CETAF

Geological Curators Group

GCG is a membership organisation and registered charity, founded in 1974 and affiliated to the Geological Society of London. Membership is open to anyone interested in geology, particularly individuals and organisations working with and caring for geological collections.

Our mission statement can be found here: About GCG

On December 1, 2022, GCG held a joint online symposium with SMMP (The Society of Mineral Museum Professionals) and the 49th GCG annual meeting. The theme, “Uniting Earth Science Collections – the continued importance of collections, and what we can learn from them,” attracted a wide range of interest and was a great opportunity to share experience and knowledge within the sector. The schedule of talks and posters can be found here.

At our AGM, Dr. Sarah King, outgoing chair of the group, announced the recipient of The Brighton Medal, for outstanding service to Geology in Museums. Sarah chose to award the medal posthumously to Matthew Parkes, who sadly passed away in 2020. A number of people present at the AGM spoke fondly about their memories of working with Matthew. 

Our GCG chair for the next three years will be Dr. Emma Nicholls FGS.

The Geological Curator is the official journal of GCG, published once a year, the most recent content (last two years) is only available to members, but older issues are freely available to browse. We welcome contributions to the journal from non-GCG members.

Get involved! We always want to talk to people who are interesting in helping out GCG, www.geocurator.org/getinvolved for more details.

To see the benefits of GCG membership, view our Blog, News, journal and newsletter, Coprolite, please visit us at https://www.geocurator.org/.

Email: info@geocurator.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GeologicalCuratorsGroup
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OriginalGCG
Sign up to our mailing list: JISCMail – GEO-CURATORS

Respectfully submitted,
Andrew Haycock, SPNHC Representative to GCG

Global Biodiversity Information Facility

SPNHC is an organizational Associate Participant in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). James Macklin is the current GBIF “Head of Delegation” for SPNHC and also serves as the Canadian Node Manager. The 29th Annual GBIF Board Meeting took place in Brussels, Belgium, October 2-6, 2022. There were many valuable updates presented on the core work in which GBIF is currently focused (https://docs.gbif.org/2023-work-programme/en/), including the approval of their next Strategic Framework covering 2023-2027 (https://www.gbif.org/document/50lI7Bxn2p1vRgpbs7aXaT/gbif-strategic-framework-2023-2027).

GBIF continues to promote the digitization and mobilization of biodiversity observation data and provide support through making available a wide variety of tools, best practices and documentation. In addition, if you have not looked at the country-level information pages, I encourage you to do so as they can be very informative. Numerous opportunities are available for training at various scales as well as competitions for funding to develop new tools and methods for data mobilization, quality control, and dissemination. I encourage all members to get involved and support this critical organization.

Of note, GBIF continues to actively investigate ways to diversify its current data model to support richer, more complex types of biodiversity data (https://www.gbif.org/fr/composition/HjlTr705BctcnaZkcjRJq/data-model-principal-
composition). They have run several webinars explaining the proposed model, including one on implications for collection management systems. GBIF is currently very interested in feedback on the model based on the use cases they have considered as well as being interested in testing additional ones. To encourage this they had an open call offering small grants to a diversity of groups interested in attempting to model components of their data. If you are interested in having a custom site to showcase your data, you might consider a GBIF-hosted data portal. Several pilots based on regions and themes were generated as part of a set of pilot projects with some now in production (https://dev.gbif.org/hosted-portals.html). Work also continues on the Global Registry of Scientific Collections or GRSciColl (https://www.gbif.org/grscicoll). The main goals are to “improve access to information about scientific collections, their host institutions as well as contacts for key collections and curatorial staff” and “improve interoperability among databases by providing unique codes and machine-readable identifiers for institutions and collections.”

Lastly, a reminder for all to support GBIF and the biodiversity informatics community’s unified vision to globally coordinate biodiversity-based resources and infrastructures. This continues to be discussed more broadly through the formation of “An Alliance for Biodiversity Knowledge”. I encourage everyone to go to the website and learn more about the concept of this new initiative and consider signing on as an individual or organizational/institutional participant: “Join us in the next phase—help us in aligning resources and investments in biodiversity informatics to improve knowledge of the world’s species and understanding of the dynamics of natural systems in support of a sustainable future for science and society.” Finally, please let me know if you have ideas for future collaborations between SPNHC and GBIF.

Respectfully submitted,
James Macklin, SPNHC Representative to GBIF

Heritage Emergency National Task Force Report

The Heritage Emergency National Task Force (HENTF) is a cooperative venture between the Smithsonian Institution Cultural Rescue Initiative (SCRI) and the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The mission of HENTF is to protect cultural heritage in our nation’s states, tribes, territories, and local communities from the damaging effects of natural disasters and other
emergencies. HENFT guidance is organized by:

Lori Foley and Nana Kaneko
Heritage Emergency National Task Force
Office of Environmental Planning & Historic Preservation
Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration
FEMA | DHS

In 2022, the United States had 18 natural disaster events with losses that exceeded more than one billion dollars each. Flooding posed the most significant threat causing 100’s of human deaths and extensive damage to cultural heritage sites. HENFT, working in tandem with SCRI, strove to protect cultural and historic resources in our nation’s states, tribes, territories, and local communities from the damaging effects of disasters. In addition to assisting museums and other cultural institutions when their collections were damaged by an event, HENTF and SCRI helped reduce disaster suffering by sending personnel to assist the public in salvaging family treasures and heirlooms. Follow this link for additional information: https://www.fema.gov/fact-sheet/heritage-emergency-national-task-force-hentf
Additionally, SCRI helped to monitor over 28,500 cultural heritage sites in Ukraine using remote
sensing and satellite imagery. For more information click:
https://hub.conflictobservatory.org/portal/apps/sites/#/home/

This past year, a large focus of HENTF was to work with the United States Department of Health and
Human Services on the US Federal Plan or Equitable Long-Term Recovery and Resilience (ELTRR):
https://thriving.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ELTRR_Federal_Plan_Overview_032222.pdf. The Plan
aims to “align federal actions, outline recommendations to improve vital conditions through a
complement of federal resources, support community and individual recovery, and improve health and
well-being.”

Respectfully submitted,
Lisa Palmer, SPNHC Representative to HENTF

Integrated Digitized Biocollections

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio) serves as the coordinating center for the U.S. national digitization effort funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF 2027654). As of 2021, iDigBio also includes the Symbiota Support Hub, a service team and infrastructure resource for Symbiota portal users and contributors (https://symbiota.org/). Katie Pearson, the project manager for the Symbiota Support
Hub, is the new iDigBio liaison for SPNHC.

iDigBio has been hard at work in 2022 to serve the biodiversity collections community by fostering partnerships and innovations, facilitating development and sharing of digitization practices and workflows, and promoting the uses of biodiversity collections data by stakeholders. We work to help collections communities get digitization done efficiently and collaboratively and to make the data available according to FAIR principles.

We have added three staff members (Shyla Davison, EODI Coordinator; Jesse Grosso & Lauren Cohen, Deputy Project Managers) to enhance our services to the collections community. iDigBio staff and PIs have provided leadership for the SPNHC Biodiversity Crisis Response Committee, including hosting internationally-attended workshops and symposia at the SPNHC conference. Last September’s virtual
BioDigiCon conference, which focused on digitization activities and practices, attracted more than 1100 participants from 68 countries. We have worked closely with the SPNHC Best Practices Committee to improve digitization and data management documentation on the SPNHC Best Practices wiki. We have
coordinated numerous online events and webinars including monthly Symbiota Support Group meetings, biweekly Paleo Data Happy Hours, Symbiota Portal Campaign trainings and community meetings, data quality webinars, and more.

Along with several co-sponsors, including SPNHC, iDigBio is organizing and planning the development of several webinars, workshops, and online community consultations focused on envisioning the Biological Collections Action Center as proposed in the NASEM report. Several iDigBio staff and PIs have been collaborating closely with the Biological Collections Network (BCoN) and its International Partners
Group on conceptualizing the implementation of the Digital Extended Specimen, an important recommendation from the recent BCoN report.

We encourage the SPNHC membership to explore what iDigBio can do for you. SPNHC members may benefit from:

• the iDigBio data portal (https://www.idigbio.org/portal/search) of digitized specimen data from U.S. institutions
  • the iDigBio newsletter (https://www.idigbio.org/newsletter-subscribe), which includes collections-related announcements and news applicable to an international audience
• the iDigBio community Slack space (https://join.slack.com/t/idigbiocommunity/shared_invite/zt-1mylg2ks2-0MYl~kj4qIUjxJzS5pPOCQ)
• iDigBio-led events (https://www.idigbio.org/calendar), including the upcoming Digital Data in Biodiversity Conference (June 5-7, 2023), Digitization Academy, Strategic Planning Course, Paleo Data Happy Hour, Symbiota Support Group meetings, WeDigBio, and more!
• iDigBio-sponsored symposia at the upcoming SPNHC meeting: SYM 6, Collections and conservation work within professional societies and organizations; SYM 15, Tips and tools for managing digital biodiversity specimens (featuring Symbiota)

Also make sure to follow us on social media: Twitter @iDigBio, Facebook: iDigBio. We look forward to even greater engagement with the SPNHC community. As our digital worlds become increasingly interconnected, so too should our communities grow and expand.

Respectfully submitted,
Katie Pearson, SPNHC Representative to iDigBio

International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories

The ISBER annual meeting has been the premier event in biobanking education for over 20 years and is the only truly global event in biobanking. Year after year, ISBER brings together new and returning biobankers from across the globe, providing opportunities for academia and industry to learn, connect, discuss, and collaborate. This year’s annual conference will be held in Seattle, Washington, USA, May 3-6, 2023, with a virtual meeting June 6-7, 2023. If you are attending in-person, you are automatically registered for the virtual event as well and do not need to purchase the virtual-only registration.
For more information, visit: https://www.isber.org/page/ISBER2023AnnualMeeting.

Respectfully submitted,
Breda Zimkus, SPNHC Representative to ISBER

Managers of Australasian Herbarium Collections

The Managers of Australasian Herbarium Collections (MAHC) held their online Annual Business Meeting over three days during the last week of November, 2022. Discussions and workshops included the linkage of specimens to Genbank and other genomic information, and how this will feed into the Australian Reference Genome Atlas (https://www.biocommons.org.au/arga) project; the Restricted Access Specimen Data project (https://www.ala.org.au/app/uploads/2022/05/22231-
Restricted-Data-Access-Project-Info-Sheet_V3_Web-version.pdf) and the implications for sharing of specimen data; and developing more resources for visitors planning on visiting herbaria in Australasia and collecting and exporting plant materials now that borders are again open. A new curation exchange program, funded through CHAH (Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria), has
proven to be successful in accelerating knowledge exchange between collections and getting unidentified material determined. The National Herbarium of NSW has finally opened its new facility at Mount Annan, and most collections continue to undergo facility and data management improvements. This year sees the Chair of MAHC transferring to Frank Hemmings (UNSW) and Assistant Chair to Andrew Franks (BRI).

Respectfully submitted,
Shelley James, SPNHC representative to MAHC-CHAH

The Paleontological Society
The next meeting of The Paleontological Society (PS) will be held during the Geological Society of America (GSA) meeting in in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 15–18, 2023.

The PS Collections subcommittee organized a topical session, “From Field to Repository: Addressing Theoretical and Practical Issues in Paleontological Collecting and Collections,” as part of the technical program during GSA 2022 in Denver. The session focused on successes and outstanding issues associated with fossil collections and collecting on private, federal, and tribal lands by professionals and amateur paleontologists; preserving physical and digital fossil data post-collection; and consistent, effective stewardship of fossils and repositories. The session was very well received, and the subcommittee hopes to follow this with a more in-depth short course on collecting and collections at a future GSA meeting.

The PS Collections subcommittee also created a survey that was rolled out at GSA 2022. The purpose of the survey was to better understand professional and avocational paleontologists’ views on fossil collecting and collections. The responses to the survey will be used to inform and guide the activities of the Subcommittee going forward. We hope to better meet the needs of the broad community of invertebrate and vertebrate paleontologists and micropaleontologists and paleobotanists.

For more information go to The Paleontological Society http://www.paleosoc.org/.

Respectfully submitted,
Jessica Cundiff, SPNHC representative to PS

MEMBERS-AT-LARGE REPORTS

Shelley James

As Member at Large, the past six months mostly involved activities relating to the upcoming conferences and annual meetings for SPNHC. I continue to support the Program and Organizing Committee for the SPNHC 2023 meeting and I am looking forward to attending in person in May/June
in San Francisco. I am assisting the conference committee activities for the 2024 meeting to be held jointly with Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) in Okinawa – we almost have a budget! As Chair of the Managers of Australasian Herbarium Collections and Oceania Representative for TDWG, I continue to liaise between MAHC-CHAH, SPNHC and the Australasian collections and biodiversity data communities.

Respectfully submitted,
Shelley James, MAL (2020-2023)

Meghann Toner
For my second year as Member-at-Large, I remain focused on being a member of two committees, the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access Committee (IDEA) and Archives Committee. I have stepped up my role in the IDEA Committee by becoming a Co-chair for this committee alongside Vanessa Delnavaz. The IDEA Committee focused on meeting quarterly and reviewing questions for the community-wide survey being led by the Long-Range Planning Committee. Over the last few months, I have been part of a group of individuals from SPNHC and the National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution (NMNH) to create and lead a Biodiversity Sciences Accessibility Workshop that will take place in April 2023. This workshop will introduce students from underrepresented groups to potential careers in natural history museums and biodiversity jobs. The IDEA Committee is setting priorities for the coming 2023 year, including a Code of Conduct for the Society.

Respectfully submitted,
Meghann Toner, MAL (2021-2024)

Jennifer Trimble
Much of my work as Member-at-Large has included serving on the Best Practices Committee, and continuing to develop resources to push out to the wiki community regarding collections care. I am currently in contact with the Local Organizing Committee for the 2023 SPNHC meeting in San Francisco to assist with preparations. I look forward to helping SPNHC reach a broader audience and continuing to promote the society’s mission.

Respectfully submitted,
Jennifer Winifred Trimble, MAL (2022-2025)