Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2017 - 18

Society Reports
represents the biodiversity biobanking community (e.g.,
animal, microbe, plant, environmental samples), presented
a workshop entitled "Commercialization and Access and
Benefit-Sharing." This two-part workshop included sections
on public and community perspectives on sample use, as
well as private and government perspectives on sample use,
including commercialization use cases. The content from this
workshop is currently being turned into a pre-recorded webinar. An EBWG webinar is also being planned for fall 2017
that will draw on best practices from human and enviro-bio
collaborations.
The ISBER Best Practices for Repositories presents the most
effective practices for the management of specimen collections, including evidence-based or consensus-based practices
for collection, long-term storage, retrieval and distribution
of specimens. The ISBER Best Practices are periodically
reviewed and revised to reflect advances in research and technology. The process to update the Best Practices guidelines
and publish the 4th edition is being led by Editor-in-Chief,
Lori Campbell. Members of the EBWG are currently reviewing the "Legal and Ethical Issues for Biospecimens" section
to ensure that issues concerning non-human biobanks are
included.
Respectfully submitted,
Breda M. Zimkus, SPNHC representative to ISBER

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. This year SCNet
partnered with the iDigBio Education
and Outreach Working Group (iDigBio E&O) and Biodiversity Literacy
for Undergraduate Education (BLUE)
to cover topics related to educational resources, initiatives,
and materials that integrate collections-based data into the
undergraduate and K-12 curriculum (recorded webinars can
be found on the SCNet webpage: http://smallcollections.net/).
SCNet's webinar series will continue in fall 2017. SCNet will
work with the iDigBio E&O, BLUE, and the Biodiversity
Collections Network (BCoN) to initiate a series of broadening participation-themed webinars.
SCNet represented the interests of small collections at a
recent iDigBio workshop entitled "Resources for CollectionsBased Undergraduate Education," conducted at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, May 24-25, 2017. The
18 * SPNHC Connection

workshop was jointly sponsored by iDigBio E&O, BLUE,
Kurator, AIM-UP!, Quantitative Undergraduate Biology
Education and Synthesis (QUBES), and BCoN. The workshop was a kick-off meeting for a QUBES Faculty Mentoring
Network (FMN) focused on implementing and optimizing
collections-based undergraduate modules. The goal of the
workshop was to bring FMN participants together for two
days to receive training on existing collections-based modules developed by AIM-UP! and BLUE, as well as to further
develop, optimize, and extend these modules to fit with different courses and students. We had 21 attendees representing
over 20 institutions. Modified modules will be implemented
at the corresponding institutions this fall, and resulting
materials will be hosted at Biodiversityliteracy.com and the
iDigBio E&O wiki.
SCNet is also collaborating with iDigBio, the Natural Science Collections Alliance (NSCA), SPNHC and BCoN, to
ensure the continued involvement of small collections within
the mainstream of the natural history collections community.
SCNet was represented at the recent BCoN Meeting, "Assessment of NIBA Goals and Future Research Opportunities."
Objectives for this meeting included evaluating our national
progress toward the NIBA goals and identifying future needs
and opportunities to ensure that digitization efforts are sustained and leveraged for future research and education.
SCNet has built a strong relationship with the Organization
of Biological Field Stations (OBFS). There is now a OBFS/
iDigBio/SCNet working and interest group focused on collections digitization and collections education. This Small
Collections Working Group (SCWG) has received funds
through BCoN to develop a needs assessment for recruiting,
supporting and sustaining small collection curation, digitization, and education efforts. The SCWG will work with
iDigBio, SPNHC, and NSCA to expand the SCNet and create
a sustainable, small collections community.
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 Symbiotadriven network that supports the mobilization of digital specimen data from vertebrate collections. SCNet has representatives on the SEINet Advisory Council.
iDigBio and the Society of Herbarium Curators sponsored a
small collections symposium at SPNHC 2017 titled, "Best
Practices for Integrating Collections into Education." The

http://wiki.datakurator.org/wiki/ http://aimup.unm.edu/ https://www.qubeshub.org/ https://www.qubeshub.org/ http://Biodiversityliteracy.com/ https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.php/E%26O_Working_Group https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.php/E%26O_Working_Group http://www.biodiversityliteracy.com/ http://www.biodiversityliteracy.com/ http://www.nansh.org/portal/ http://www.smallcollections.net/ https://bcon.aibs.org/ http://www.csvcoll.org/portal/ https://bcon.aibs.org/ https://www.qubeshub.org/groups/nhc_fmn/ https://www.qubeshub.org/groups/nhc_fmn/

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