Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2016 - 10

Society Reports * * * Erica Krimmel from the Chicago Academy of Sciences, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Erica's presentation was "Evaluating collection management systems for interdisciplinary natural history collections [co-author Dawn Roberts]." Elana Benamy served as her mentor. Brian Rankin from the University of California, Berkeley Museum of Paleontology. Brian's presentation was "Digitizing Eocene Fossil Collections for Global Change Research." Ann Molineux served as his mentor. Julian Carter from the National Museum of Wales. Julian's presentation was "Avoiding a Pickle - Developing standards for the Sustainable Care and Conservation of Fluid Preserved Collections [co-author with Dirk Neumann]." Miranda Lowe served as Julian's mentor. The Christine Allen Travel Grant awardee: * Mariana Di Giacomo from the University of Delaware, Department of Art Conservation. Mariana's presentation was "The Effect of Light on Vertebrate Fossils: Exhibition, Collection and Artificial Aging." Matt Brown served as her mentor. And in a first (in recent memory), awards were also given for the top three poster presentations during the conference. These include: * First Place: Kirsten E. Nicholson and Lillian Hendricks, Museum of Cultural and Natural History at Central Michigan University, Mt Pleasant, Michigan, USA, for "Comparison of two lid types for museum fluid collections." * Second Place: Viviane Leyman, Sofie De Smedt and Piet Stoffelen, Botanic Garden Meise, Collections Department, Melse, Belgium, for "Palms and Carl von Martius in the Botanic Garden Meise." * Third Place: Suzie Li Wan Po, Cambridge University Museum of Zoology, Conservation, Cambridge, UK, for "Needle felting fills: Creating fills for areas of fur loss using needle felting as a technique." The PDC is forming a subcommittee to work on mentorships and travel grants. Elise Lecompte will chair this new subcommittee. In the past, the PDC divided up tasks to facilitate the grants with the Local Organizing Committees for each conference, but now to help streamline the process and increase efficiency, the subcommittee will take on the former responsibilities of the LOCs and work directly with the Grants and Awards Committee. 10 * SPNHC Connection Workshops Jennifer put out a new survey of the SPNHC membership to look for workshop trends and needs. The results will assist LOCs with workshop topics and help SPNHC to keep tabs on topics that need to be repeated on a timely basis or that represent new areas for exploration in a workshop venue. Wiki and Web Jennifer is doing the preliminary work with the SPNHC web and wiki masters on setting up the PDC pages. Anna Monfils and Kari Harris will start working on social media content for the wiki. The initial work on the web and wiki are mid-range and will get a start after the Leadership Manual section is drafted. As always, if any member of SPNHC would like to work on any of these projects, please contact Jennifer Strotman or Jeff Stephenson. We value and appreciate your volunteer efforts on behalf of SPNHC and your colleagues. Respectfully submitted, Jeff Stephenson and Jennifer Strotman, Co-chairs Publications Committee The first six articles for Volume 30 of Collection Forum have been published "online first" and the new and improved SPNHC Leaflet #7 on an alternative to gelatin capsules in museum collections by Paul Callomon is on the SPNHC website. The book project Preventive Conservation: Collection Storage is progressing nicely. The estimated cost of the 30 chapter book with over 60 contributing authors is $95. To insure this purchase price, you may pre-order a copy at editor@spnhc.org or Collection-Storage@conservation-us. org. For book content details, please visit http://resources. conservation-us.org/collection-storage/. Our Publications Committee meeting at SPNHC 2016 in Berlin was fruitful. Ann Pinzl, who is joining the Editorial Board as a second book editor in addition to Lynn Jones, suggested moving Book Reviews to SPNHC Connection. This will go into effect in the spring 2017 SPNHC Connection issue. We hope that this will lead to greater visibility of book reviews. Please submit requests for book reviews or book reviews to editor@spnhc.org. We also discussed holding a special session at the SPNHC 2017 conference in Denver on how to best promote your work via publications. Topics will include captivating your http://www.spnhc.org/ https://www.wordpress.com http://www.spnhc.org/media/assets/1470419112_Leaflet7-1.pdf http://www.spnhc.org/media/assets/1470419112_Leaflet7-1.pdf http://resources.conservation-us.org/collection-storage/ http://resources.conservation-us.org/collection-storage/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2016