Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2017 - 14

Society Reports
SPNHC Representative Reports
American Society of Mammalogists

entire committee. It is hoped that it will not only be informative but will also help garner additional entries and updates
for the survey report.

Since 1972, the American Society of
Mammalogists (ASM) has had a standing committee, the Systematic Collections Committee, as an outgrowth of an
ad hoc committee 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
relating to collection administration, curation, and accreditation; 2) maintaining a directory of mammal collections and
conducting a survey of existing collections approximately
once each decade; and, 3) maintaining a list of curatorial
standards for mammal collections and managing a collectionaccreditation program under the auspices of the Society.

Finally, a subcommittee (Jon Dunnum, Marcia Revelez,
Burton Lim and Caleb Phillips) was tasked with developing
proposed ASM standards for genetic resource collections
similar to the ASM standards for mammal collections. Progress on the document was discussed at the annual committee
meeting. Work will continue on this document.

Once the evaluation process is completed, the committee
forwards its recommendations for accreditation to the ASM
president for review. The president then notifies the collection's administration of the committee's decision. If accreditation is to be conferred, the president sends a letter to that
effect, as well as an accreditation certificate and a copy of
the final report. Final reports generally contain both positive
observations and recommendations for improvement. The
latter rarely comes as a surprise to collection staff. Rather, the
committee works with the staff to articulate areas for which
they need greater administrative support. It is hoped that the
committee's recommendations will highlight the importance
of the collection to the mammal research community and help
to leverage greater institutional support for the collection.

Respectfully submitted,
Suzanne B. McLaren

During the 2016-2017 annual ASM cycle, a site visit for reaccreditation of the mammal collection at Texas Tech University was conducted by Robert Dowler and Tom Lee (April 6,
2017). The re-accreditation was discussed by the committee
at the ASM annual meeting, but with many committee members absent, an email discussion and vote occurred in July. It
is expected that the mammal collection staff at TTU will be
notified of their successful re-accreditation soon - if that has
not already happened by the time this article is published. Additional collections, primarily in Mexico, are interested in accreditation, but travel funds for site visits are a limiting factor.
The committee continued to work on the survey of mammal
collections of the western hemisphere and expects to have
a report completed for dissemination and publication by the
end of 2017. A poster presented by Jon Dunnum and Committee Chair, Robert Dowler was presented at the annual
meeting in Moscow, Idaho, based on the data collected by the
14 * SPNHC Connection

To view the current version of Mammal Collections of the
Western Hemisphere, a copy of the basic curatorial standards
used by the committee for accreditation, a list of accredited
collections, or a link to Cost of Collecting and Preparing
Mammal Voucher Specimens for Natural History Collections
by Robert D. Bradley, Lisa C. Bradley, Heath J. Garner, and
Robert J. Baker (2012), see the Systematic Collections Committee page on the ASM website: http://www.mammalogy.
org/committees/systematic-collections#tab3.

American Society of Plant Taxonomists
I serve as an ex-officio member of the
ASPT Systematics Collections Committee. The chair of the committee leads
a Curator's meeting during the annual
Society meeting.
One of the committee goals is to
promote regional networking of US
herbaria, interfacing with participants in
the United States Virtual Herbarium, Global Plants Initiative,
and the NSF-ADBC program.
Several years ago, we attempted to resurrect an effort to revise a Best Practices document for herbarium operations, first
proposed in 1958 and last revised in 1978; this project may finally come to fruition. After an online discussion about recent
problems with importing herbarium materials, we were able
to receive clarifying information from APHIS-PPQ. Earlier
this year, we also worked with the ASPT President to respond
to requests for support in the wake of the closing and move
of the University of Louisiana-Monroe herbarium (NLU)
and the temporary move of the University of Massachusetts
herbarium (MASS).
The 2017 Annual meeting of the Society was held in conjunction with Botany2017 in Fort Worth, Texas, on June 24-28,
2017.

http://www.mammalogy.org/committees/systematic-collections#tab3 http://www.mammalogy.org/committees/systematic-collections#tab3

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2017