Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2016 - 15

Society Reports tions between SPNHC and GBIF. Respectfully submitted, James Macklin, SPNHC representative to GBIF The Geological Society of America GSA will be held in Denver, Colorado, September 25-28. Deadlines: Abstracts - July, 12, 2016; Early Registration August 22, 2016; Housing (discounted lodging) - August 21, 2016. There will be several exciting sessions, although none directly sponsored by SPNHC this year: Session T138 Fossil Specimens 0's and 1's: Databases, Standards, & Mobilization includes many papers presented by members of SPNHC; Session T95 Museums at the Forefront of the History and Philosophy of Geology is a complete day of papers addressing museums, collections, and their importance in Geology. I reported in detail on the GSA Associated Societies meeting for the 2016 ABM report in Berlin (pages 31-32). We are looking forward to a good meeting this year and are hoping that SPNHC members in the Denver vicinity may spare some time to run the booth for a few hours. Please let Tiffany Adrain (tiffany-adrain@uiowa.edu) know if you can help in this capacity. The booth is where we can reach new potential members. Booth supporters are provided with registration. Respectfully submitted, Ann Molineux, SPNHC representative to GSA iDigBio It's exciting to look forward to the next five years and beyond at iDigBio. You can expect more Thematic Collections Networks (TCNs), more international collaborations and a new emphasis on research use of biological and paleontological collections data. At upcoming conferences, please come see us in our new booth and discover new features in our data portal. And speaking of booths, iDigBio and SPNHC materials are shared in our respective organizations' booths - emphasizing the integral relationship. Digital transformation. For natural history collections, the theme of digital transformation runs through many of our current efforts whether we are involved in specimen preparation, data transcription, imaging, education and outreach, sustainability, museum administration, or research. At SPNHC 2016 in Berlin, SYNTHESYS3, GBIF, CETAF, iDigBio, and others created a symposium aimed at realizing global digitization and data access for biological collections. We received a large number of abstracts (example: 27 abstracts for nine slots in one of these symposia)! So, we put together another symposium to fit the demand and the talks. SYNTHESYS3 and iDigBio organized a Digitization Software Training Workshop, filled to capacity, focusing on Inselect, Symbiota & ABBYY FineReader and hosted by the Berlin Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum (BGBM). Capacity building. Another SPNHC 2016 symposium, sponsored by iDigBio and SCNet, looked at the biodiversity informatics skills needs for current and future museum professionals. The 2016 Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) Conference also has a symposium on this same topic, convened by iDigBio, the NHMUK and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). I'm hoping we can work together (worldwide) on a road map to develop a common skills list (across our museums), and a resources list for where our workforce might acquire the skills on the list. Certainly, this also means compiling the work of others that have tackled parts of this subject already. I'm thinking the SPNHC Professional Development and Emerging Professionals Committees might like to get involved with this. SPNHC 2017, TDWG, and beyond. I've been asking around to gauge interest in a Data Carpentry workshop at SPNHC 2017. What do you think? Let me know soon, what you might like to collaborate on. For example, how are your institution's curation practices changing as digitization is integrated into your collection? Through Andy Bentley and Ellen Paul, plans are underway for an iDigBio-hosted, SPNHCmoderated webinar on the ramifications of the Nagoya Protocol (tentative date October 2016). SPNHC 2017 events already include plans for two workshops on collections data use (more details soon). And with the possibility of some future SPNHC meetings being co-located with Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) meetings, imagine what we can do! Digitization trends. In my last annual report, I mentioned the GBIF Task Force on Accelerating Discovery of Biocollections Data. A huge thank you to all of you who took the time to contribute to our recent survey. Worldwide, over 800 individuals completed at least a portion of the survey, resulting in 617 usable surveys. Respondents represented nearly 2000 collections distributed over 72 countries! Our Task Force Interim Report should be released about the same time as this yearly report. September 2016 * 15 http://www.gbif.org/newsroom/news/accelerating-discovery-of-biocollections-data http://www.gbif.org/newsroom/news/accelerating-discovery-of-biocollections-data

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