Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2017 - 19

Society Reports
symposium was developed with the iDigBIO E&O Working
Group, BCoN, SCNet and NSCA and included 14 invited
talks. New partners at NEON, Ecological Society of America,
BLUE, and ESRI presented on opportunities for collaboration
with the collections community. We learned about a series of
broadening participation initiatives through museum workshops, and several invited speakers introduced educational
modules, techniques and best practices for using collections
and collections-based data in the K-12 and undergraduate
classroom. The session culminated with a talk from NSF
representatives to highlight funding opportunities at NSF for
improving education, workforce training, and providing opportunities for inclusion and broadening participation.
Looking ahead to 2018, SCNet is interested in hearing from
the community about ongoing needs and how the network
can help advocate for, and facilitate involvement of, small
collections.
Respectfully submitted,
Anna Monfils, SPNHC representative to SCNet

Society of Herbarium Curators
The Society focuses on promoting the
importance of herbaria in teaching,
research, and service to the community
at large. Members are active in the continued development of regional and/or
state-level consortia and are participating in both regional efforts and the US
Virtual Herbarium project.
I was recently re-elected as a Member-at-Large on the Executive Board of SHC. I worked with the SHC President and
chair of the Herbarium Assistance Committee to compose a
letter on behalf of the Society responding to the news of the
closing and move of the University of Louisiana-Monroe herbarium (NLU); we also have been in contact with the curator
of the Pringle Herbarium (VT) following the fire in the building housing that collection on August 4, 2017. I also served
on the ad hoc Constitution and Bylaws Review Committee
for the Society.
The major event for this past year was an online course focusing on strategic planning. This was followed by a half-day
symposium on herbarium strategic planning held immediately
following the Botany2017 meeting.
The 2017 Annual meeting of the Society was held in conjunction with Botany2017 in Fort Worth, Texas, June 24-28, 2017.
Respectfully submitted,
Rich Rabeler, SPNHC representative to SHC

Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
The 77th Annual meeting of the Society
of Vertebrate Paleontology was hosted
August 23-26, 2017, in Calgary, Alberta, and was attended by numerous
SPNHC members. The annual Preparators Session focused on topics related to
paleontological collections conservation
and care. SPNHC was represented at the
Preparators Committee, Government
Affairs Committee, and SVP Business meetings. The 2018
meeting is planned for October 17-20, 2017, in Albuquerque,
New Mexico.
The SVP wishes to remind SPNHC members that it offers
several awards and grants that might have relevance to those
interested in paleontology. These include grants (http://
vertpaleo.org/the-Society/Awards.aspx) to promote student
research and fieldwork, like the Estes, Patterson, and Wood
awards. The Jackson Student Travel Grant and Scientists
from Economically Developing Nations grant both help support travel to the SVP annual meeting. The Hix Preparators
Grant is awarded to advance fossil research, standards, and
training in preparation and collections disciplines. Not all
of these awards limit eligibility to current members of SVP,
check the requirements carefully.
Respectfully submitted,
Matthew Brown, SPNHC representative to SVP

Taxonomic Databases Working Group
The 2016 annual meeting of the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG)
was held in Santa Clara de San Carlos,
Costa Rica, in early December. The
theme of the meeting was "Standards
Supporting Innovation in Biodiversity
Research and Conservation" and an
archive of the meeting website, which
includes the program and links to
the abstracts, can be found at http://www.tdwg.org/conference2016/. Recordings of key symposia were made by iDigBio and are available at https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.
php/TDWG_2016_Annual_Conference.
Over the past year TDWG has continued to update its infrastructure including our wiki and a new GitHub repository.
The TDWG membership approved an updated governance to
address issues that come with being a successful and growing international body. TDWG also ratified a new process for
September 2017 * 19

http://www.vertpaleo.org/the-Society/Awards.aspx http://www.vertpaleo.org/the-Society/Awards.aspx http://www.tdwg.org/conference2016/ http://www.tdwg.org/conference2016/ https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.php/TDWG_2016_Annual_Conference https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.php/TDWG_2016_Annual_Conference

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