SPNHC Connection – March 2024

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. On behalf of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, I open this edition with a big thank you to express our gratitude and heartfelt appreciation to the leadership and staff of the California Academy of Sciences for the hosting of the 38th Annual Meeting “Taking the Long View”. Led and guided by the co-chairs Maureen “Moe” Flannery and Laura Eklund, the LOC team once again did an extraordinary job bringing the complexity of this meeting together in a friendly, open, and generous way.  This was the third time the society has been to San Francisco, and once again it has been warmly welcomed with a truly inspirational and well-organized conference that brought our collections community together in such a positive and vibrant atmosphere to share our knowledge, experiences, and expertise. Following the recent challenges from the pandemic and the ongoing major global issues around climate change and biodiversity loss, the value of our natural science collections has never been greater, and this conference is a major contributor to supporting and connecting our collections community and the work they do. It was thus amazing to have so many attendees coming together from across the world including a significant number of emerging professionals whose skills and enthusiasm will very much be the backbone to the future care of our collections. We now look forward to the 2024 meeting in Okinawa where a joint team between TDWG and SPNHC has been working hard putting together a conference with our colleagues in Japan. A call for contributions is now live, and further updates are within the Conference Committee report and on the conference website. A huge thank you goes to the extensive team currently involved in the planning of this conference.

We also welcome to council some new members from the recent elections. Shelley James returns to the council, this time in the role of secretary, and we are joined by new Members-at-Large, Adania Flemming and Laura Rincón. Our thanks go to all who took part in and supported the elections. We unfortunately have had no nominees for the role of President-Elect and once again put out a plea to anyone interested in taking on the role to please get in touch. I’d also like to thank our outgoing council members for their support and work for the society, namely outgoing secretary Tiffany Adrain and Members-at-Large Meghann Toner and Vanessa Delnavaz. A big thank you to you all.

As ever, the backbone of SPNHC 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. 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 illustrate the wide range of activities that SPNHC members undertake to support our wider collections community. One area of note is the merger of two of the committees into a single new body that will better reflect the way these committees have evolved over recent years. The Emerging Professionals (EPC) and Professional Development (PDC) Committees have now merged into the Networking and Career Development Committee, and we thank the team who have led this merger. Kevin Krajcir and Jessie Nakano are continuing as co-chairs and are currently looking for further support to take the aims of the new committee forward.

The council and associated committees continue to meet quarterly via Zoom to help improve communications and support moving society business forward throughout the year. In addition, the society continues to use its Slack account as an additional means to communicate more widely, and many of the channels on that account are open to all members to join and use. Also, I would like to remind members that the society has both Zoom and YouTube channel accounts which are there to support the work of 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.

The council has continued to move forward with ways to improve the workings of SPNHC and to reduce the administrative role of running the society, particularly the handling of the membership and business systems. This resulted in 2022 with the hiring of Christy Classi and her team to manage the SPNHC memberships and business office website which has significantly reduced the administrative burden on key officer roles. As demands on our time continue to spiral, this is an area SPNHC will endeavor to keep developing in a pragmatic and practical way. However, this does come at an additional cost, and thus our next task is to properly review our finances and to consider the impacts of the additional costs and risks we are now incurring to ensure a sustainable future for SPNHC as well as better support for our activities, e.g., developing new meetings and workshops, further enabling the work of the committees, improving collaborations with kindred societies and greater grant support. This work will need to be considered carefully so that we remain an affordable society and will be linked closely with the results of the recent members survey and review of the SPNHC Strategic Plan which the Long-Range Planning Committee is currently coordinating.

SPNHC is very much run by the community it is a part of, driven by an immense amount of enthusiasm and passion from its members, and it continues to look to support numerous initiatives both with our kindred societies and from the wider associated community. As a result, SPNHC is continually looking to evolve and move forward to give our community a wider voice in supporting the diversity of work around the remarkable collections we are custodians of. So please do get involved in some way if you can via 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 thank the whole team for their inspirational support and guidance over this past year to both me in the presidential role and to the Society.

Julian Carter, SPNHC President

39th ANNUAL MEETING 2024

SPNHC-TDWG Joint Conference 2024
Enhancing Local Capacity, Elevating Global Standards
Ginowan City, Okinawa, Japan
September 2-6, 2024

Website: https://www.tdwg.org/conferences/2024/
Contact: okinawa2024@spnhc.org

The SPNHC-TDWG 2024 Conference Organizing Committee is thrilled to announce the 39th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) will be held in Asia for the first time in the organization’s history. Even more exciting, the meeting will be held jointly for the second time with Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) in a hybrid format, supporting in-person and virtual networking between natural history collections and biodiversity data professionals across the globe.

A Program Committee is currently being established, and the call for organized sessions around the theme “Enhancing Local Capacity, Elevating Global Standards” closes on 16 February 2024. Abstract submissions will be announced in March 2024 once a program has been drafted and sessions announced.

We highly encourage participation and attendance from underrepresented regions and diverse communities. We welcome any inspiring topics from global-scale integration of natural history collections into biodiversity knowledge infrastructures, to smaller-scale community capacity building that can contribute to the overarching theme “Enhancing Local Capacity, Elevating Global Standards.“

The conference venue, the Okinawa Convention Center, is located next to a beach in Ginowan City on Okinawa Island, Okinawa, Japan. The nearest airport is Naha Airport (Code: OKA), less than a 4-hour flight from Tokyo hub airports. The local time zone is Japan Standard Time (UTC+09:00) or 13 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time. You can find affordable accommodations near the venue as well as in downtown Naha.

The conference will run from Monday through Friday, 2-6 September 2024. The week will be packed with the main program consisting of SPNHC and TDWG scientific content and fun events, but please plan to arrive early and extend your stay afterward as optional field trips and collection tours will be arranged on the weekends immediately before and following the official meeting schedule.

The Ryukyu Islands are characterized by their subtropical to tropical biota and embrace a higher level of species richness and endemism, contributing to flora and fauna unique to each island group. Because of their ecological significance, a part of the region is protected as a Natural World Heritage site. Okinawa is also known for its rich history, tradition, arts and culture. You don’t want to miss the amazing opportunities Okinawa has to offer!

Stay informed via our meeting website (https://www.tdwg.org/conferences/2024/), SPHNC and TDWG social media posts, and email announcements from the Organizing Committee for the latest updates including abstract submission instructions and deadlines.

We look forward to seeing you all in Japan!

_______________________

Mariko Kageyama & Shelley James
SPNHC-TDWG 2024 Organizing Committee

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Notice of 2024 Annual Business Meeting 

The 39th Annual Business Meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections will be held on the afternoon of September 6, in the Okinawa Convention Centre.
Please visit: https://www.tdwg.org/conferences/2024/

Museum Collections Care

In 2022, an independent group of museum professionals launched a group called Museum Collections Care (MCC) via Google Groups. MCC is “an independent communication network designed to continue our dialogue about collections care and management issues, including professional development opportunities and job postings. It is open to anyone interested in the museum collections field, including those employed as museum registrars, collections managers and curators of collections, as well as students and volunteers. You need not be a member of any museum professional organization to participate and anyone interested is invited to join.”

Although there have been few communications thus far about natural history collections, several SPNHC members are on the listserv, and questions or comments about natural history collections are welcome.

The MCC listserv is not affiliated with any museum services organization (including the American Alliance of Museums or its Collections Stewardship Professional Network).

For more information or to join the group, contact museumcollectionslist@gmail.com.

– John E. Simmons

COMMITTEE REPORTS

Archives

The Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) houses the archives of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC). SIA currently holds 16 deposits of SPNHC material totaling 23.5 cubic feet. Examples of this material include Collection Forum, SPNHC newsletters, documentation of annual meetings, financial files, election ballots, member-at-large files, various committee files, videos, CDs, and photographs.

The members of the archive committee act as liaisons between SIA and SPNHC. In preparation for the transfer to SIA, the documentation and material related to the activity of the society are organized in archival boxes, and a “finding aid” is typed for each box. The material is arranged in folders with year, type of documentation, and a summary of the folder’s content. When known, files received from individuals are noted.  Although the society has moved to electronic publications, these are printed and cataloged for deposit.  The finding aid along with the boxes are transferred to SIA, where an accession number is assigned to the deposit and the finding aid is uploaded to the SIA website.  

Material, documentation, images, and publications continue to be collected by the Archive Committee.  Where possible, any material sent to the participants such as the book of abstracts, committee reports, schedules, etc., were printed.  Mariel Campbell and Cindy Ramotnik sent several boxes of historical material that have been processed and have been submitted to the SI Archives.  To find other material deposited at SIA go to https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/search?query=SPNHC. 

 We are now gathering material, emails, and other documents pertaining to the 2023 San Francisco, California, meeting, as well as the 2024 meeting to be held in Okinawa, Japan, this year.  Cindy Ortiz stepped down as Secretary last year and turned over paper and electronic documents that she inherited from previous secretaries and material she generated during her tenure, and Suzanne McLaren sent files from her office. These will be added to the next submission to SI Archives.

Many of the Archive holdings are located off-site.  If copies of material are needed or if you need to consult an accession, please contact the SIA Reference Team at osiaref@si.edu to retrieve records.

Respectfully submitted,
Carol Kelloff, Chair
Meghann Toner
Lisa Palmer

Best Practices

This past September 2023 the Best Practices Committee held a virtual wiki editing session. During this session, six participants continued working on content to fill gaps and bridge areas of knowledge across natural history disciplines. The group started planning site organization related to permitting and concepts that fall between storage solutions and preparations. Shortly after this session the SPNHC wiki server went offline and has not yet been recovered, though a previous version has been identified on Internet Archive. We are looking into options with the Web and Social Media Committee and hope to be able to bring a solution to Council soon.

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

Biodiversity Crisis Response

During SPNHC’s 2023 conference in San Francisco, the committee organised, under the lead of Libby Ellwood, a well-attended symposium titled “Collections and Conservation Work Within Professional Societies and Organizations”. The symposium brought together speakers from four continents (Asia, Australia, South and North America) with focuses on living as well as preserved collections, who presented the work of their institutions, professional fields,

and national to continental networks. The symposium was accompanied by a workshop that was conducted in the form of a world café and offered presenters and conference participants an opportunity for more in-depth exchange and discussion.

After three years at the helm of the committee, Libby and

Jutta decided to step down as co-

chairs and find a new leadership team for the committee. Sparked by personal and professional changes in the lives of both co-chairs in 2023, the transition was also motivated by allowing new voices and topics to come to the forefront and contribute to shaping the collection community’s role and participation in biodiversity conservation.

In November 2023, Alina Freire-Fierro and Mike G. Rutherford took over as co-chairs of the committee. They chaired the monthly online meetings and discussed a range of potential new projects for the committee to consider. These included: looking at ways of encouraging more participation in the BCRC as although there are more than 20 members listed, only a handful attend the monthly meetings; encouraging more collections in the Global South to sign up to GRSciColl, the Global Registry of Scientific Collections maintained by GBIF; organising joint virtual meetings with other organisations as part of or separate from conferences; developing a series of online short lunchtime chat sessions with other SPNHC committees.

After Mike posted a request on the NatSCA listservs several new members joined the committee and other expressions of interest were made.

Suggestions for events at the SPNHC/TDWG Okinawa 2024 conference will be submitted in February, potentially these include holding a bioblitz during the conference to encourage awareness amongst attendees of local biodiversity and to increase local observations as part of the legacy of our visit, and organising a session looking at the IUCN Red List Assessment process and how museum workers have and can contribute to their development.

Respectfully submitted,
Alina Freire-Fierro and Mike G. Rutherford, Co-chairs
Jutta Buschbom and Libby Ellwood

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.

The committee began meeting on a monthly-ish basis during 2023 to create a more cohesive group, share tips and advice, and discuss projects. During the hour-long causal Zoom calls, there have been lab tours, brainstorming sessions, and treatment progress reports. We hope to continue these sessions into 2024.

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 Fran Ritchie at franritchie@gmail.com

Respectfully submitted,
Fran Ritchie, Chair

Education

The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) Education Committee hosted the third virtual Natural History Education (NHE) DemoCamp on June 14–15, 2023.  The goal of the NHE DemoCamp is to share, discover, and discuss educational materials that have a framework in natural history. This is building upon our original iterations of the ‘education share fair’ that was hosted at the SPNHC annual meetings 2018–2019.

This year’s NHE DemoCamp had over 150 registrants with 14 different live demonstrations and discussions that took place over the two days. Educational materials shared varied widely in scope, audience, format, and topic, from how to engage audiences with virtual natural history collections resources to how to build engaging in-person public programming. You can find short descriptions and links to each educational resource on the event’s abstract page. You can also find recordings for all of the demo sessions on the DemoCamp website.

We encourage all of our presenters to share their resources as Open Education Resources (OER) on the SPNHC Natural History Education Portal. As a reminder, this portal is also open to everyone! Anyone can add their education or outreach materials to this community space. It only takes a short amount of time to create an OER and it will increase your resource visibility! If you would like help getting started please reach out to Molly.

2023 Natural History Education DemoCamp Partners.

A huge thank you to all of the organizers from the SPNHC Education Committee and to all of our partners who helped us spread the word! Stay tuned for announcements for this year’s NHE DemoCamp! We are also always looking for new partnerships and members. Please fill out our interest form for more information, or reach out to us through email!

If you are interested in joining the Education Committee, please contact the current active committee members at: educationdemocamp@gmail.com.

Respectfully submitted,
Molly Phillips, Chair
Liz Leith, Shanna Hillard, and Jen Bauer

Emerging Professionals

After much deliberation, we (the Emerging Professionals and Professional Development Committees) have decided to merge. This restructuring was done in collaboration with the leadership of the former committees, and with input from members, as well as with the support of the current SPNHC Council. As of January 1, 2024, the committees formerly known as the Emerging Professionals Committee and the Professional Development Committee will now be called the SPNHC Networking and Career Development Committee (NCDC). 

The mission of the Networking and Career Development Committee is to connect individuals from a variety of disciplines and experiences who work with natural history collections. The committee focuses on expanding awareness and involvement from all levels of professionals and students in the Society for Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC). A primary focus of the committee will be the development and execution of a mentor-mentee program. This program will introduce early career professionals and students to established professionals who have shared interests at the annual conference. With the efforts of this committee, we will encourage these relationships to continue after the conference has ended. Otherwise, the newly merged committee will also continue some of the programs of its founding committees, such as the SPNHC Networking Luncheon and the conference travel grants program among others. We are currently working to update the conference prep packet and plan new networking ideas based on 2023 feedback. We hope to implement these ideas at the 2024 conference! We are working to update the website and social media accounts to reflect this change as well. 

This committee is comprised of three co-chairs for publicity, conferences, and professional development. Kevin Krajcir and Jessie Nakano (formerly co-chairs of the Emerging Professionals Committee) will serve as two of the three co-chairs. However, they are seeking a third co-chair and additional committee members to help guide this new group. For more information about the roles of the co-chairs or to express your interest in joining the committee, please email Kevin Krajcir (kevin.krajcir@smail.astate.edu) or Jessie Nakano (nakanojk@si.edu).

We look forward to serving the SPNHC community in this new capacity!

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

Elections

This year, the elections were conducted successfully online on the platform ElectionBuddy.com. The call for nominations was sent to members via email, for the positions of Secretary and two Members-at-Large. Six candidates were willing to stand for the three positions.

The election began on December 8, 2023, with a close on January 12, 2024. All voting members (as of November 2023) were emailed using the online system. At the close of the election, the total number of returned ballots was 258, or 34% of the 770 eligible members.

The bar chart below shows the voting trends over the past five years.

The positions filled and successful candidates are:

Members-at-Large:
Laura Rincón votes, 139, 27.47%
Adania Flemming, 155 votes, 30.63%

Secretary:
Dr. Shelley James, 133 votes, 53.20%

These results have been shared with the membership via NHCOLL-L and the SPNHC Connection newsletter.

Due to a lack of nominees for President-Elect, an interim candidate, approved by the council, will hold this post until a member can be formally elected in the next election cycle.

Respectfully submitted,
Jean-Marc Gagnon and Bethany Palumbo, Co-chairs

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access

The Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Committee aims to ensure that all members of the society feel welcome and valued, regardless of their background or identity, by promoting a respectful and diverse environment. This year, the committee met on multiple occasions, both virtually and in person, during the SPNHC annual meeting at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Twenty-five members attended this meeting.  A wide range of ideas were discussed, and a list of potential objectives for the future was created. Since this in-person meeting, the committee members have been working on two primary goals from this list:

1). Establish a Memorandum of Understanding between SPNHC and Black in Natural History Museums (BlackInNHMs).

2). Create a Code of Conduct for the society and a possible template for future meetings. 

BlackInNHMs aims to create a safe space where black voices and stories can be heard and celebrated within the natural history community. They also welcome allies to join in supporting and amplifying these voices. You can find more information about this amazing organization at https://www.blackinnhms.org/. We are currently in the process of developing an MOU to form an alliance with this organization, and we hope to make progress soon.

A sub-committee has formed to create this Code of Conduct, which is being led by Christy Bills. Along with Christy Bills, the subcommittee comprises Vanessa Delnavaz, Jeannette Pirlo, Randy Singe, Genevieve Tocci, and Meghann Toner. As part of our discussions, we have decided to develop a secure reporting system for any issues related to the Society. We are in the process of contacting other organizations to learn from their experiences in implementing such a reporting system, which will be crucial for the successful implementation of the Code of Conduct. As always, please reach out to either of the co-chairs for any thoughts, ideas, or concerns. 

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

Legislation and Regulations

The Legislation and Regulations Committee has been working on a number of initiatives. We have drafted guidelines for hand-carrying specimens to be published on the SPNHC wiki. The document contains a thorough overview of all required permits, as well as recommendations regarding what additional information needs to be compiled for the hand-carried material. It outlines what is required to obtain clearance from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), discusses designated ports of entry, clarifies whether import permits of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are needed, and provides other hands-on information and useful advice.

We have also written an opinion on ‘bona fide’ research and deposition of biological materials in natural history collections, specifically marine mammals, with the aim of explaining our mission to U.S. stakeholders outside of our community (e.g., governmental agencies) and to prevent future issues with permits being denied in relation to receiving or taking specimens into ownership for taxonomic research. The committee has not yet determined where this piece will be submitted for publication.

As a follow-up of the symposium at the SPNHC conference in San Francisco, the committee compiled a list of all relevant legal acts of the European Union (EU) that regulate the shipment of preserved natural history specimens to the EU and how specific reference to these may be useful for the US Fish and Wildlife Service to positively identify preserved natural history objects that are exchanged between natural history museums for scientific research.

We are also following the current development and discussions of the potential regulation of Digital Sequence Information in preparation for the sixteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Colombia scheduled from 21 October to 1 November 2024. Information on the COP can be found here https://www.cbd.int/article/colombia-host-cop16. A new informal Advisory Group on Benefit-sharing from the Use of Digital Sequence Information on Genetic Resources was formed in November 2023. The next meeting of the working group will be on February 15 with outcomes of the work scheduled for August 2024. Additional information can be found at https://www.cbd.int/dsi-gr/iag-2024.shtml.

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

Long Range Planning

The LRP committee has spent time analysing the survey results and sent the survey responses to an independent data analyst to produce a report highlighting the information gathered, in preparation for an in-person two-day strategic planning meeting. The committee is currently trying to arrange a suitable date and venue to work through the issues and opportunities facing the society in order to produce a new strategy for the society to be presented for comment at the annual meeting in Okinawa.

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

Membership

The fabulous work this society continues to do, to advocate and support natural history collections, can only be achieved with the support of the members and the funds raised by the membership fees. This international organization gives you access to a lively, active interdisciplinary community of professionals dedicated to the care of natural history collections. Its members are made up of museum specialists such as curators, conservators, research scientists, data managers, educators, archivists, and many other disciplines across natural sciences from around the globe.

It’s now time to renew for 2024 if you haven’t already done so!

Annual memberships expire on December 31, with a renewal grace period through to February 14. In 2023 our membership numbers reached 822 from 36 countries, and with our meeting being held in Okinawa later this year we hope to reach even more.

Currently, we have 460 members but as this is the period for renewal, we expect that figure to rise again as they renew in the next month.  

Promotion

We continue to promote SPNHC at conferences by advertising in conference literature and exhibiting the Membership Booths. 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.

Respectfully submitted,
Suzanne Ryder, Chair

Publications

COMMITTEE COMPOSITION

Following many years of dedicated service as chair of the Publications Committee and chief editor for the society’s journal, Mariel Campbell has decided to step down from these roles. Thankfully, her experience and knowledge will continue to benefit SPNHC generally and the Publications Committee specifically as she has agreed to remain on board as an associate editor for Collection Forum. Additionally, Mariel provides advice and assistance to the new chair, Scott Rufolo, as he transitions into this position following approval of the change at the 2023 council meeting held in San Francisco.

We express sincere gratitude to Mariel for all the work she has done and continues to do in building and maintaining our publications activities, and also offer a special note of thanks for her support of the new chair.

COLLECTION FORUM

Volume 35 of Collection Forum (2021) remains the latest issue available online at https://meridian.allenpress.com/collection-forum. This is the first issue to have been 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 a given 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 generally available online only to current members, becoming openly available to all once superseded by a subsequent issue. In cases where not enough articles have been accepted for publication within a given year and a volume thus spans a period of two years before sufficient content has been accumulated, individual articles within the multi-year volume will convert to open access status after one year has passed from the date of initial publication online.

Volume 36 is now under production and has four manuscripts working their way through the review process. Collection Forum accepts full-length manuscripts as well as short communications, technical notes, detailed book reviews, and submissions that traditionally would have gone to the Leaflets series. Peer evaluation and editorial review of most content is coordinated through the journal’s team of associate editors; decisions concerning the most appropriate format for publication for certain submissions will be handled in collaboration with the leaflet, book review, and newsletter managers.

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.

Scott Rufolo serves as Managing Editor of Collection Forum. Mariel Campbell, Mariana di Giacomo, Shelley James, and Genevieve Tocci 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 your 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 SPNHC Connection. 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 or updates to the society webpage, please email Liath at newsletter@spnhc.org. To access SPNHC Connection, please go to the Publications tab at  www.spnhc.org. The most recent issues require member login.

SPNHC BOOKS

Our most-recent 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 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 or to suggest ideas for future book titles.

JOURNAL AND NEWSLETTER ACCESS

A reminder that past issues of the newsletter and the journal are available online at www.spnhc.org. More recent issues of Collection Forum (those published since 2014) are provided as fully interactive online volumes accessed through https://collectionforum.org/, which requires a separate member login (see above for information on Meridian site access). Older issues are available at the same link but have been uploaded as PDF documents. If you or your institution require assistance with accessing the newsletter or the journal, please contact editor@spnhc.org.

SPNHC PUBLICATION ARCHIVES

Carol Kelloff, Archives chair, maintains 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 the spnhc.org portal, 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,
Scott Rufolo, Chair

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 winners of the 2023 awards are:
THE CAROLYN L. ROSE AWARD
Jean DeMouthe

THE PRESIDENT’S AWARD
Christopher A. Norris

SPECIAL SERVICES RECOGNITION
Sophie Cersoy
Véronique Rouchon
California Academy of Sciences Local Organizing Committee

The FITZGERALD TRAVEL GRANT
Yu-Ling Huang
Bakoliarisoa Rakotozafy

The CHRISTINE ALLEN TRAVEL GRANT
Cataloina Merino Yunnissi

The Winners of the 2022 awards are:
(Not announced in last year’s newsletter)

THE EARLY CAREER AWARD
Libby Ellwood

SPECIAL SERVICES RECOGNITION
National Museums Scotland and Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh Local Organizing Committee

VENDOR RECOGNITION AWARD
University Products

The FITZGERALD TRAVEL GRANT
Ally Coconis
Katrian Derieg
Gabriela Hirata e Silva
Stephanie Killingsworth
Kevin Krajcir
Laura Alejandra Rincón Rodriguez
Brittney Elizabeth Stoneburg
Jacki Whisenant

The CHRISTINE ALLEN TRAVEL GRANT
Liatte Dotan
Bruna Toscano de Carvalho

All previous winners are listed on the SPNHC website. The committee is currently deliberating this year’s awards which will be presented in Okinawa during the ABM meeting. The 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 is excited to announce that we will be working with Best Practices to move the SPNHC wiki to our website at https://www.spnhc.org.

The committee welcomes anyone interested in helping out with the SPNHC website, Facebook, Instagram, and X. In particular, we need help from someone to keep our WordPress event calendar up-to-date. Please contact Liath Appleton at webmaster@spnhc.org for details.

Respectfully submitted,
Liath Appleton, Chair

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 the recovery of lost specimens.

During the SPNHC 39th Annual Meeting in Okinawa, the committee will meet to discuss a symposium and future plans.

Respectfully submitted,
Paul Mayer, Chair

US Federal Collections

The US Federal Collections Committee met quarterly throughout 2023 to share and commiserate. Outside our usual Zoom committee meetings, the chairs have met with the DOI, to understand their future priorities and how SPNHC can assist in achieving shared priorities. This information was then shared across the committee. Committee members have also presented to a number of other organizations. In collaboration with a subset of committee members and federal partners, Carrie Eaton presented a poster on federal collections management at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 2023 annual meeting in October. Based on case studies drawn from the professional experiences of non-federal repository managers, the authors also presented a list of recommendations to improve communication, funding, and data accessibility with regard to specimens from federal lands. The poster can be viewed here: http://tinyurl.com/3cdmee2k. The poster was very well received and has opened new lines of communication with federal agents and agencies.

Additionally, Adam Rountrey, recently received approval for a proposed symposium at the North American Paleontological Convention, NAPC 2024. Through interactions within the federal collections committee, he was able to garner support to write the proposal for, “Managing and Engaging with Federal Paleontological Resources in the 21st Century: Best Practices, Innovative Ideas, and Collaborative Approaches”.

We welcome participation from any federal agents/employees working in the cultural and natural history sector.

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

REPRESENTATIVE REPORTS

American Society of Mammalogists

Beginning in 1972, the American Society of Mammalogists (ASM) has had a standing committee called the Systematic Collections Committee (SCC), originally formed at the request of the National Science Foundation. The society has defined this committee’s responsibilities as follows: (1) Advising curators worldwide in matters of collection administration, curation, and accreditation; (2) Maintaining a directory of mammal collections and conducting a survey of existing collections once each decade (most recently published in 2018); and (3) maintaining a list of curatorial standards for mammal collections including tissue collections and managing a collection-accreditation program.

As noted above, a survey of existing mammal collections in the Western Hemisphere was most recently conducted in 2018 and is accessible on the committee’s website at: http://www.mammalsociety.org/index.php/committees/systematic-collections. At the annual ASM meeting held in Anchorage, Alaska, in July 2023, the committee brainstormed the idea of expanding the content of the survey to create an online directory of collections. It was suggested that this could link collections to their GBIF occurrence dataset if one exists, but this would be a small subset of all the mammal collections documented for the Western Hemisphere. Currently, a subcommittee is exploring options for this idea. Any progress will be reported in the 2024 Annual Report of the ASM Systematic Collections Committee along with other committee activities and, subsequently, shared with SPNHC as part of its Annual Report and in the October newsletter.

Respectfully submitted,
Suzanne McLaren, SPNHC Representative to ASM

Association for Materials and Methods in Paleontology

Over the past few months, AMMP has been receiving submissions for abstracts and workshop proposals for the next annual meeting which is being hosted by the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden, Manitoba, Canada. The meeting will be hybrid with in-person and virtual accessibility May 7-11, 2024.  As an association focused on the methods of paleontological work, care is taken to ensure that work presented at meetings is done so with health and safety considerations at the forefront. Therefore, the abstracts and proposals for the 2024 meeting will be reviewed by the newly appointed AMMP Health and Safety Committee in addition to the Abstract Committee. More information about the annual meeting can be found at this website: https://paleomethods.org/Annual-Meeting

More updates are on the horizon from the chairs of the Training Committee and the Resources Committee as they team up to improve the training resources available to the membership. Stay tuned!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/148962468849
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@associationformaterialsmet4935

Respectfully submitted,
Christina Byrd, SPNHC representative to AMMP

Association of Registrars and Collections Specialists

The 2023 ARCS conference, Momentum, took place in Montreal, Canada, from 7-10 November 2023. If you would like to know what goes on at an ARCS conference, there is a short (less than one minute) Conference Momentum Recap video that captures the spirit of the ARCS meetings, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i8zbLS8NDA.

The Resource Kit on the ARCS website continues to be updated and can now be searched by subject area or type of resource, https://www.arcsinfo.org/community/resources/resource-kit. Jobs and internships are available at https://www.arcsinfo.org/opportunities/career-center, and general museum news related to collections is posted on News in the Field, https://www.arcsinfo.org/community/news-in-the-field. Have questions about registration or collections management? ARCS members are invited to post questions to the ARCS Forum at https://www.arcsinfo.org/community/forum#type=q-and-a&page=1&post=&search=. Recently answered questions concerning archival pens, deeds of gift, and wording of loan agreements.

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

Biodiversity Information Standards

The 2023 annual meeting of Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) was hosted by the Atlas of Living Australia and National Research Collections Australia in Hobart, Tasmania, from October 9-13, with both in-person and remote participation. The hybrid conference details can be found at:

https://www.tdwg.org/conferences/2023/. This year the Interest and Task Group Working Sessions will be held virtually from February 19-22, 2024, focusing on standards development. You can check out the abstracts for talks and posters along with the presentations themselves in most cases as they were published as Proceedings in the journal Biodiversity Information Science and Standards (BISS: biss.pensoft.net/collection/408/). 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 website, 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 (biss.pensoft.net). With specific relevance to SPNHC, members of the Natural Collections Description 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/). This new standard is currently completing the review process and is expected to be ratified soon. 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 2024, TDWG is very excited to once again meet jointly with SPNHC and will hold a hybrid conference with in-person attendance in Okinawa, Japan, from 2-6 September. The theme for the conference is “Enhancing Local Capacity, Elevating Global Standards.” This is a great opportunity for our two communities to learn more about each other and continue our joint efforts to preserve and document biodiversity enabling research to address our urgent and grand challenges. For more information please see the conference website (https://www.tdwg.org/conferences/2024/) 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

Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities

The collaboration between SPNHC and CETAF has steadily continued throughout 2023. In several committees, on the mailing list NHCOLL-L, as well as in the SPNHC council, SPNHC members, colleagues primarily active in CETAF, and colleagues who are engaged in both associations work closely together. Thus, the links between SPNHC and CETAF within Europe, as well as the connections across continents are manifold, actively maintained by all partners and going strong through shared goals, ideas and challenges, with the communities working together to find and achieve solutions.

As liaison, my contacts and exchanges during the past year were with CETAF’s ePublishing working group, collections group, Legislation and Regulations group, as well as CETAF executive committee and secretariat members.

During biweekly to monthly meetings, a group of Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), CETAF and SPNHC members, together with partners from Plazi discussed, clarified and found consensus on the copyrightability of data, the applicable legal context for their extraction from scholarly publications using text and data mining, and best practices for authors and publishers of publications going forward. The outcome is a set of recommendations published in RIO in November 2023 that has the support of the three societies (Joint statement by CETAF, SPNHC and BHL on DATA within scientific publications: clarification of [non]copyrightability). Its earlier sibling, the joint recommendation on best practices for the publication of taxonomic authorities (Joint statement on best practices for the citation of authorities of scientific names in taxonomy by CETAF, SPNHC and BHL), is also drawing attention and receiving recommendations on, for example, the ResearchGate platform.

Following the publication of the recommendations, Scott Rufulo, chair of SPNHC’s Publications Committee and editor of SPNHC’s journal Collection Forum, Laurence Bénichou, co-chair of CETAF’s ePublishing working group and Liaison Manager of the European Journal of Taxonomy (EJT) and I met. The meeting provided an opportunity to get to know each other and discuss the recommendations.

Additional topics over the past year were raised by Luc Willemse, chair of CETAF’s collection committee. His inquiries were into opportunities for regional meetings and workshops focused on the managing and preservation of material collections, as well as the integration of digital infrastructures holding collection objects’ digital twins.

Data governance, science-policy advocacy, and infrastructure development were the topics in interactions with Dirk Neumann, (co-)chair of SPNHC’s and CETAF’s Legislation and Regulations committees, as well as Ana Casino, Laura Tilley and Eva Häffner, members of the CETAF Executive Committee and Secretariat. Alessandro Marchi, CETAF communications officer provided support and advice in advertising joint activities and outcomes with the CETAF ePublishing group.

Respectfully submitted,
Jutta Buschbom, SPNHC Liaison to CETAF

Convention on Biological Diversity

2023 was Year One of the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and its monitoring campaign, adopted by the parties of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in December 2022.

Development processes for data management infrastructures and knowledge services at complementary levels (global – regional/continental – national) have been picking up their work and accelerated their activities throughout the year.

In April 2023, I attended as a virtual participant and representative for SPNHC (recognized by the CBD as observing society) the initial co-design workshop for a Global Knowledge Support Service for Biodiversity (https://gkssb.chm-cbd.net/).

This CBD activity was followed in August by a “Call for expressions of interest to host a regional and/or subregional technical and scientific cooperation support centre to facilitate the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (https://www.cbd.int/tsc/tscm/) and an associated webinar. After the webinar, I was in contact with Ana Casino, Executive Secretary of CETAF (the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities). The 26 organizations and networks that were selected to move to the second stage in the selection process for the establishment of these globally distributed supported centres were published in November (https://www.cbd.int/doc/notifications/2023/ntf-2023-126-tsc-en.pdf).

From September to December the CBD secretariat organized the Knowledge Management for Biodiversity (KM4B) webinar series (https://km4b.cbd.int/webinars) that brought together a wide range of actors and stakeholders.

The Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) was the first CBD body to meet in preparation of the next Conference of the Parties (COP-16). Directly after it convened, COP-15 met for the last time and was finally closed (https://www.cbd.int/conferences/nairobi-2023). I had been able to virtually attend at least most of the plenaries of these meetings to keep up-to-date on negotiations.

Unfortunately, virtual attendance was not possible for the sessions of the “First meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Benefit-sharing from the Use of Digital Sequence Information on Genetic Resources” (in association with the “Twelfth meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Intersessional Working Group on Article 8(j) and Related Provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity”; https://www.cbd.int/conferences/geneva-2023). A recording of (part of) the meeting is available on the CBD’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVQ1U_Iwofg&list=PLjpSs1uejVAnIm2iwcTBZuSZRytb-ZWJz).

In January 2024, the “Composition of the Informal Advisory Group on Benefit-sharing from the Use of Digital Sequence Information on Genetic Resources” was published (https://www.cbd.int/doc/notifications/2024/ntf-2024-004-dsi-en.pdf). For our community, fortunately, Tim Hirsch from GBIF will participate in the IAG. The IAG will meet monthly this year, continue the discussions about Digital Sequence Information (DSI), and work towards a foundation that will make the adoption of a decision at the next COP possible. Materials presented at these monthly meetings can be accessed at https://www.cbd.int/dsi-gr/iag-2024.shtml.

Looking forward, the next CBD Conference of the Parties, COP-16, is scheduled for October 21 to November 1, 2024, in Columbia. Also in Columbia and two weeks later, the UN World Data Forum (UNWDF 2024; https://unstats.un.org/unsd/undataforum/) and the UN Statistical Commission’s High-level Group for Partnership, Coordination and Capacity-Building for statistics for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (HLG-PCCB) will be held from November 11-14, 2024. The announced thematic areas (https://unstats.un.org/unsd/undataforum/programme/index.html) seem to align well with the aims of SPNHC and the collections community in general. Specifically, those that promote access to and the reuse of data as digital twins of material collection objects and born-digital field observations.

Respectfully submitted,
Jutta Buschbom, SPNHC Representative to CBD

Entomological Collections Network

Background
ECN formed an MOU with SPNHC in late 2016; this is our 7^th annual report.  ECN is a 501(c)(3) non-profit international organization dedicated to promoting entomological science through the preservation, management, use, and development of entomological collections and to disseminating information and fostering communications between collections managers around the world regarding best practices in entomological (and arthropod) natural history collections. The Network is organized and operated exclusively for scientific and educational purposes. 

ECN 2023 (In-person and virtual meeting; In-person: 4-5 November 2023)
ECN homepage: https://ecnweb.net/

The annual ECN meeting was held as a blend of in-person and virtual modalities in 2023. The in-person venue was the conference facility at National Harbor, Maryland, USA. Here is a link to the meeting program: https://ecnweb.net/welcome/meeting/ecn-2023/2023-program/

Meetings were held Saturday, November 4, and Sunday, November 5, 2023. Once again, the “virtual” presentations provided a unique opportunity to hear from colleagues who usually might not otherwise be able to attend the meetings and to “virtually visit” several entomological collections from all over the globe.

The next meeting of ECN is planned for November 9-10, 2024, in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, in conjunction with the annual ESA meeting https://www.entsoc.org/events/annual-meeting

Contributed talks: 24
Symposia included:

1. The Everlasting Trace
   Moderator: Jennifer Girón, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA/ Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA (10 talks presented)
2. Collections of the World
   Moderators: Nicole Gunter, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland, Ohio, USA & Oliver Keller, Keller Entomological Consulting LLC, Gainesville, Florida, USA (12 collections highlighted from all over the world)
3. The Power of People
   Moderator: Jennifer Girón, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA/ Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA (7 talks presented)

2023 meeting organizers: Ainsley Seago, Christopher Grinter, Andrew Johnston, Christy Bills, Patrick Gorring, Jennifer Girón, Ashleigh Whiffin, and Oliver Keller.
ECN Social Media Team: Ashleigh Whiffin
Program layout and design: Oliver Keller and Jennifer Girón
The ECN Executive Committee and Officers:

• Oliver Keller, President (2023-2025)
• Ainsley Seago, Past President (2023-2025); Co-communications Officer (2023-2025)
• M. Andrew Johnston, Vice-President (2021-2025)
• Jacki Whisenant, Secretary (2023-2025)
• Patrick Gorring, Treasurer (2016-2025)
• Chris Wirth, Program Co-chair (2023-2025)
• Kristin Jayd, Program Co-chair (2023-2025)
• Ashleigh Whiffin, Co-communications Officer (2019-2025)

Respectfully submitted,
Daniel K. Young, SPNHC representative to ECN

Geological Curators Group

GCG is a membership organisation and registered charity, founded in 1974, and open to anyone interested in geology, particularly individuals and organisations working with and caring for geological collections.

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

We have several exciting events to look forward to in 2024 and report back on for 2023!

2024 EVENTS

In May we will celebrate the 50^th Golden Anniversary of GCG with a special meeting in Leicester.  Where in 1974, over 30 curators gathered to discuss the concept, agree on a draft constitution, and form a working party of members that would become GCG!

Geological Collections Past, Present and Future. 17-18 May 2024 at the University of Leicester and Leicester Museum & Art Gallery, home to the famous holotype fossil of Charnia masoni.

Further details will follow, but we are calling for presentations on the theme of past, present and future of geological collections. You don’t need to be a GCG member to attend or present. Presenters will be invited to submit papers for a special golden anniversary issue of Geological Curator.

There will also be opportunity to visit British Geological Survey (BGS) Nottingham and Charnwood Forest Geopark, where the first Charnia fossil was discovered by two school children in the 1950s.

Symposium on Toarcian Palaeobiology, 17–20 June 2024, Bath, UK.

GCG is pleased to announce the forthcoming conference dedicated to all aspects of Toarcian palaeobiology, to be held at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution. Further details to follow here.

The History of Geological Discovery in Polar Regions

Joint meeting with History of Geology Group (HOGG). 16-17 July 2024, Sedgewick Museum and Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), Cambridge, UK. More details to follow here.

SPPC – The Symposium on Palaeontological Preparation and Conservation will be held at Southampton in September 2024. More information TBC.

2023 EVENTS

SPPC 2023 took place on 6 September 2023 at the University of Lincoln, UK. The interesting and varied range of presenter abstracts can be found here.

On 19 October 2023, GCG led a hands-on Dinosaur Trackways Field Workshop in partnership with Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

In November, GCG was delighted to bring members our Winter Seminar and 50^th AGM. The ongoing conversation regarding the forging of links between institutions and private collectors inspired our topic “Building bridges between collectors and museums”. The programme and abstracts can be found here. The event generated some extremely interesting discussion and work for the future.

One of the speakers, longstanding GCG member Roy Starkey was awarded a British Empire Medal for ‘Services to Mineralogy’ in the King’s Birthday Honours List in 2023. Congratulations Roy!

Our final event of 2023 was a Digital Morphology Workshop in December at Oxford University Museum of Natural History, with training in cutting-edge methods for creating virtual models of whole organisms, including both fossil and living species.

Watch this space for similar events in the future.

JOURNAL

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 interested in helping out GCG, visit www.geocurator.org/getinvolved for more details.

Email: info@geocurator.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GeologicalCuratorsGroup
X: 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: www.gbif.org). James Macklin is the current GBIF “Head of Delegation” for SPNHC and also serves as the Canadian Node Manager. The 30^th Annual GBIF Governing Board Meeting took place in Canberra, Australia, from 18-19 October 2023. There were many valuable updates presented on the core work GBIF is currently focused on in support of their new Strategic Framework covering 2023-2027.

GBIF continues to promote the digitization and mobilization of biodiversity occurrence data and provide support by 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 promote the diversification of its current data model to support richer, more complex types of biodiversity data. 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. Also, if you are interested in having a custom site to showcase your data, you might consider a GBIF-hosted data portal. There are now several portals that have been developed based on regions and themes. Work also continues on the Global Registry of Scientific Collections or 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

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/).

In 2023, iDigBio has continued its work to foster partnerships and innovations, facilitate the development and sharing of digitization practices and workflows, and promote the use of biodiversity collections data by stakeholders. iDigBio developed new courses on digital imaging and immersive media, offered five Digitization Academy courses, and offered the Strategic Planning for Biodiversity Collections course. We published several papers on topics including 3D imaging (https://doi.org/10.1002/aps3.11547), best practices in data citation (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02230-y), education (https://doi.org/10.1002/nse2.20097), and research (e.g., https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10367), several of which are part of a special issue of Applications in Plant Science focused on image analysis (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/issues/448245/).

iDigBio also continues to lead the biannual Worldwide Engagement for Digitizing Biocollections (WeDigBio; https://wedigbio.org/) events, which engage thousands of participants worldwide. It also coordinates the annual Digital Data in Biodiversity Research (https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.php/7th_Annual_Digital_Data_Conference,_Arizona_State_University) and BioDigiCon (https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.php/BioDigiCon_2023) conferences, again drawing international crowds. We conducted in-person outreach at multiple conferences, including SPNHC 2023, Botany 2023, Ecological Society of America 2023, and Biodiversity Data Standards (TDWG). We coordinated a symposium at SPNHC 2023 focused on “Tips and Tools for Managing Digital Biodiversity Specimens.” We have also 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.

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 (May 29-31, 2024), Digitization Academy, Paleo Data Happy Hour, and Symbiota Support Group meetings, WeDigBio, and more!

Also, make sure to follow us on social media: X: @iDigBio, Facebook: iDigBio. We look forward to even greater engagement with the SPNHC community.

Respectfully submitted,
Katie Pearson, SPNHC Representative to iDigBio

International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories

The ISBER 25th Anniversary and Annual meeting entitled “Dreaming Beyond Barriers: The Future of Biobanking” will be held in Melbourne, Australia, on April 9-12, 2024. A virtual meeting will also be held May 28-29, 2024. This meeting will reflect and celebrate the impact of the biobanking community, its resilience in overcoming barriers, and its shared dreams for the future. If you are attending in person, you are automatically registered for the virtual event and do not need to purchase the virtual-only registration. Early bird registration ends February 19. For more information, visit https://www.isber.org/page/2024Annual. This meeting closely follows the publication of the fifth edition of ISBER’s Best Practices (https://www.isber.org/page/bpr), a key document providing guidance, recommendations, and procedures for those curating biobanks.

Respectfully submitted,
Breda Zimkus, SPNHC Representative to ISBER

Managers of Australasian Herbarium Collections

In October, the Managers of Australasian Herbarium Collections (MAHC) held their first face-to-face Annual Business Meeting since the pandemic. Highlights from the meeting included: an online Oceania engagement session with representatives from herbaria in the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea; a robust discussion on the challenges of ensuring compliance with the Nagoya Protocol; and a productive discussion with representatives from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’s (DAFF) Plant Import Operations team around challenges with the interpretation of biosecurity conditions as they relate to herbarium material. The Plant Import Operations team understands and values the work of herbaria and is keen to ensure import processes are as straightforward as possible. We remind our SPNHC colleagues to please contact Australasian herbaria directly before shipping parcels to ensure that you have the latest shipping requirements and biosecurity documentation.

Throughout 2023, the Australasian herbarium community came together for four online Curation Symposia. Aimed at technical curation staff, the symposia provided an opportunity for herbarium curators to share knowledge and ideas with their counterparts in other Australasian herbaria. Presentations have covered a wide range of topics, including overviews of:

• the relocation of the NSW herbarium to a new facility
• the relocation of wet collections at CANB
• new curation techniques for fungi and slime moulds at MEL, including custom box-making using a Cricut cutter
• an overview of the Volunteer Botanical Training program at CANB
• the processing of a large, naphthalene-treated donation at NSW.

The symposia have been very well attended – with dozens of attendees from Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific herbaria – and we intend to develop a new program of presentations and conversations for 2024.

Lastly, I’d like to introduce myself as the new SPNHC representative for the Australasian herbarium community and to thank Shelley James for her energy and enthusiasm in this role before me. After many years in various data-management roles at the National Herbarium of Victoria (MEL), I now have the honour of being the Manager of its wonderful collection. I’m pleased to be engaging more actively with the SPNHC community as the MAHC–CHAH representative and look forward to meeting many of you at the joint conference in September.

Respectfully submitted,
Alison Vaughan, Manager Collections, National Herbarium of Victoria (MEL), Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria and 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 Anaheim, California, September 22-25, 2024.

The PS Collections subcommittee is organizing a short course at GSA titled “From the Earth to the Repository and Beyond: Fossil Collecting and Collections Issues at Every Level” that will be held on Saturday, September 21. The overall goal of the short course will be to educate participants about safe, legal, ethical, and accessible practices in the field and repositories. Topics covered in the short course will include:

• Professional and avocational partnerships: how to establish and maintain
• Permitting rules and regulations: where to get current information
• Obtaining funding for field work and field-related research, museum research
• Ethical, legal, safe, accessible collecting best practices: what are they; how to establish/maintain them?
• Post-collection stewardship and accessibility: working with repositories and museum professionals
• Published documentation and digitization: how much to disclose, responsibility for digitized images
• Collection management issues: staffing, housing, funding
• Orphaned collections: loss of stewardship; locating important collections from particular individuals

Another meeting to note for 2024 is the North American Paleontological Convention (NAPC) being held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 17-21. There will be three symposia relevant to paleontology collections:

• Broadening accessibility in paleontology through innovative community engagement practices
• Managing and engaging with federal paleontological resources in the 21st century
• North American paleontological resources 2024

For more information about NAPC go to https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/napc2024/

For more information about PS go to http://www.paleosoc.org/

Respectfully submitted,
Jessica Cundiff, SPNHC representative to PS

MEMBERS-AT-LARGE REPORTS

Vanessa Delnavaz

In my third year as Member-at-Large, I have spent most of my time focusing on my role as co-chair of the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) Committee. IDEA Co-chair Meghann Toner and I led the in-person IDEA Committee meeting at the 2023 conference in San Francisco during which we focused on organizing priorities for the upcoming year. We had productive conversations with leaders of Black in Natural History Museums (BlackInNHMs), and we are working towards a Memorandum of Understanding between SPNHC and BlackInNHMs. Meghann and I have also been part of a subcommittee working on a Code of Conduct for SPNHC as a whole. The subcommittee will also work on creating a Code of Conduct specifically for the 2024 Okinawa conference, taking into account TDWG’s standing Code of Conduct as well as Japanese cultural expectations.

Respectfully submitted,
Vanessa Delnavaz, MAL (2021-2024)

Irene Finkelde

I have served in the SPNHC council as a Member-at-Large for the previous two years, during which time I have really enjoyed working with other members and learning more about how the society operates.
I have recently started a new job as Senior Objects Conservator at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery so I have been less engaged with my committees than I would have liked. I am very much looking forward to assisting with the organisation and planning for the SPNHC-TDWG 2024 conference and attending the conference in Okinawa later this year.

Respectfully submitted,
Irene Finkelde, MAL (2022-2025)

Meghann Toner
As I begin my final year as a Member-at-Large, I am involved in two committees: the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access Committee (IDEA) and the Archives Committee. I am honored to serve as co-chair of the IDEA committee alongside Vanessa Delnavaz. During the SPNHC meeting in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to meet many members and potential members of this committee in person, which was a wonderful experience. At the meeting, the committee outlined a list of priorities, but we decided to focus on two goals for 2023/2024. Our first goal is to establish a Memorandum of Understanding between SPNHC and Black in Natural History Museums (BlackInNHMs). Our second goal is to create a Code of Conduct for the society and a possible template for future meetings. I am part of the subcommittee for the code of conduct, and we are making progress toward developing a concise code that includes a reporting system and consequences. On the Archives Committee, I am happy to support Carol Kelloff with any tasks she needs to complete. I am looking forward to the second half of my MAL tenure.

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

Jennifer Trimble
For my second year as Member-at-Large, I have continued my work with the Best Practices Committee while also promoting the information that has been deposited on the wiki to my home institution and to other mollusk collections. I have gathered MCZ Malacology Department workflows and protocols set up during specimen-focused museum NSF TCN grants, which are now ready for dissemination via the SPNHC portals. In the past, the connections haven’t always been made from grant-funded projects to an archived museum repository. Help me change that!

I am assisting with conference activities for the 2024 meeting to be held jointly with Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) in Okinawa and hope to facilitate a successful meeting.

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