Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2016 - 17

Society Reports particular face deeper and deeper cuts. Scientific Collections International The funding situation for museums continues to be an issue of concern for NatSCA and we have been working more closely with other Subject Specialist Networks (SSNs) to explore ways of building resilience in the sector. As part of this we have been involved in planning and delivering training to help support museum professionals whose role has broadened to encompass collections outside their areas of expertise, such as the Curating Human Remains workshop organised in collaboration with the Museum Ethnographers Group (MEG), the Society for Museum Archaeology and the Human Remains SSN. We have also delivered training for other SSNs, such as the Identifying Natural Materials course held in Exeter by MEG. Of course, we have also been delivering training more specifically for natural sciences collections professionals, such as the NatSCA Bone Day held in Cambridge. Skills and knowledge transfer is something that we see as being key to building resilience in the sector, so at the moment we are working on a joint funding application to Arts Council England (ACE) in partnership with the Geological Curators Group, to develop further training resources for professionals responsible for natural science collections. If all goes to plan we will be rolling out these resources over the next 18 months - so fingers crossed! Both Andy Bentley and Barbara Thiers were invited to a workshop co-sponsored by NSF and SciColl on the Global Registry of Scientific Collections (GRSciColl). I was not able to attend, but Andy Bentley attended to present the findings of the first workshop which was devoted entirely to GRBio, the Global Registry of Biodiversity Repositories. Other workshop participants included researchers, collections managers and curators, administrators, professional associations, specialists in collection databases, research informatics and data publication, as a well as representatives of U.S. federal government agencies. The goal of the workshop was to familiarize the group with GRSciColl, discuss how it can complement existing resources and practices, collect feedback on the current system and gather input on additional desirable functionality. Finally, I want to offer a vote of sincere thanks to the volunteers that keep NatSCA running and to offer congratulations to two members of the NatSCA committee, Clare Brown and Isla Gladstone, on the new additions to their families. Our elected committee spend a huge amount of time and effort on making things happen, in particular, our Treasurer Holly Morgenroth, who ends up being at the core of everything that we do. Of course, we also rely hugely on less visible, but no less important volunteers from the general membership. In particular I want to thank Justine Aw who has been both working for NatSCA in a paid capacity with funding from ACE and supporting us extensively in her own time, lending a hand with pretty much everything we do; Glenn Roadley, who has been supporting the committee by updating the jobs page on the NatSCA website (natsca.org/jobs) and helping with electronic bookings; Rachel Jennings who has been editing the NatSCA blog and Facebook page, with Emma-Louise Nicholls and Sam Barnett who have also been working hard to keep the blog regular and active; as well as David Notton, who works hard to support our Editor Jan Freedman in producing the Journal. Respectfully submitted, Roberto Portela Miguez, SPNHC representative to NatSCA Andy Bentley suggests that there is the possibility of future collaboration with GRSciColl with regard to database cleanup and augmentation by regional node managers who may be SPNHC members. Respectfully submitted, Barbara Thiers, SPNHC representative to SciColl Small Collections Network SCNet has been active in recruiting, retaining and supporting small collections in the last year. The SCNet webinars (co-sponsored by iDigBio) continue to garner interest, with topics centered on supporting small collections and establishing SCNet as a collaborative resource for small collections and the professionals who manage them (recorded webinars can be found on the SCNet webpage: http:// smallcollections.net/). SCNet's webinar series will continue in fall 2016. In conjunction with iDigBio and SEINet, SCNet has also expanded its digital data mobilization efforts by expanding the nodes within the North American Network of Small Herbaria (http://nansh.org/portal/) to include a variety of small herbaria from academic institutions and biological field stations. In collaboration with iDigBio and Arizona State University, we have also launched the new Consortium of Small Vertebrate Collections website (http://csvcoll.org/portal/), a SymbiotaSeptember 2016 * 17 http://www.grscicoll.org/ http://www.grbio.org http://www.smallcollections.net/ http://www.smallcollections.net/ http://www.natsca.org/jobs http://www.nansh.org/portal/ http://www.csvcoll.org/portal/

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