Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2016 - 6

Society Reports Archives Committee Background The Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) houses the archives of SPNHC. SIA currently holds 16 deposits of SPNHC material totaling 23.5 cubic feet. Examples of this material include Collection Forum, SPNHC Connection, documentation of annual meetings, financial files, election ballots, memberat-large files, various committee files, videos, CDs, and photographs. Procedure The committee chair acts as liaison between SIA and SPNHC. The committee receives, lists, and transfers material to the Smithsonian Institution Archives when sufficient quantities accumulate. All material that is deposited within a fiscal year (October 1 through September 30) is assigned the same accession number and housed in the same storage box/unit. Some SPNHC archives need to be rehoused in archival materials prior to transfer to SIA. All material that has been received since the last deposit is being held by the committee. Current Work Although SPNHC is publishing electronically, printed copies of SPNHC Connection and Collections Forum are being deposited in SPNHC's archives. No requests for archived information were received by the chair in the past year. Images from the SPNHC annual meeting in Gainesville were provided by Linda Hollenberg and Meghann Toner. Material for deposit was received from Ruth O'Leary. Meghann Toner, Carol Kelloff and Jennifer Strong photo-documented the SPNHC annual meeting in Berlin. As per SIA protocols, both electronic and physical materials are being prepared for deposit in SIA. Respectfully submitted, Linda Hollenberg and Meghann Toner, Co-chairs Best Practices Committee The Best Practices Committee met at the 31st Annual Meeting of SPNHC in Berlin, Germany. Twenty-two committee members and prospective committee members were on hand to discuss existing and new content for the SPNHC wiki (http://spnhc.biowikifarm.net/wiki). Several topics for desired content were discussed (e.g., Access and Benefit-Sharing, 6 * SPNHC Connection Herpetology and Ichthyology Fluid Collections, Moving Collections). The Committee co-chairs will be working with committee members to amass content for these topics and include them on the SPNHC wiki in the coming year. Several committee members attended a JMIH Workshop on Fluid Collections (i.e., Herpetology and Ichthyology) that was partially funded by iDigBio. In this single day session on July 11, four working groups produced Google documents that will be a starting point for numerous pages on the SPNHC wiki. The four areas of focus for the working groups were Field to Database, Digitization, Curation and Collection Storage. The Citations Subcommittee is continuing to gather citations for museum collection related content, although contributions have decreased slightly over the last year. The subcommittee is also looking into ways to update the presentation of citations and make them more easily searchable. Respectfully submitted, Jessica Cundiff and Breda Zimkus, Co-chairs Margaret Landis, Citations Subcommittee Chair Bylaws Committee The Bylaws Committee is responsible for the continued development of the Society Bylaws, monitoring Society activities to ensure agreement with the bylaws, and for periodic updates to the Leadership Manual of the Society. Bylaws: numerous additions and changes have been suggested during the Leadership Manual update process and these will be enacted and voted on by Council in the near future. Leadership Manual: work continues on updating the Leadership Manual for consistency and content, led by committee member Laura Abraczinskas. Committee chairs and officers as well as Executive Council have been engaged to provide updated materials, and these are in the process of being incorporated. Respectfully submitted, Andrew Bentley, Chair http://spnhc.biowikifarm.net/wiki

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