Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2017 - 5

President Report - Linda S. Ford
With respect to upcoming conferences, our plans for annual meetings now extend to 2019. Next year's meeting in Dunedin, New
Zealand, hosted by the Otago Museum and the University of Otago,
is looking to be an exciting conference, especially with the timely
theme of "Collections and Data in an Unstable World." This is
the first time that SPNHC will meet in the Indo-Australian region.
More information about this meeting can be found in the current
SPNHC newsletter. In 2019, our meeting will be held at the Field
Museum of Natural History (FMNH) in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

"I encourage all members to
become more involved with
the Society, including participation on SPNHC committees. In addition, I would like
to remind all members that we
will have an election this year
for President, Secretary and
for two Members-at-Large."

1998 in Edmonton, Canada, the dedication and commitment of
the society's members to further its mission has been a constant
motivation for my own involvement. It is the understanding that we
are all working on something bigger than ourselves and a commitment to do our very best to infuse meaning into the concept of
"in perpetuity" that continues to fuel my ongoing involvement. I'm
very honored to do my part in my new role in the Society, and I look
forward to SPNHC continuing to advocate for the improvement and
advancement of our treasured collections.
----------------Linda S. Ford is Director of Collections Operations for the Museum
of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. She oversees museum-wide
projects and initiatives that encompass the museum's ten research
collection departments, including the museum-wide database and
IT infrastructure.

Finally, if you are new to SPNHC, Welcome! I encourage all members to become more involved with the Society, including participation on SPNHC committees. In addition, I would like to remind
all members that we will have an election this year for President,
Secretary, and for two Members-at-Large. Please consider who
among you will make good leaders, officers and representatives of
our society as we plan for the future.
Profile
I've always loved natural history. In graduate school at the University of Texas at Arlington, my colleagues and I used to work in the
collections for fun. It was exciting to be able to figure out a problem
or at least document its status. The idea that the result of this work
could potentially be utilized by other researchers, both today and
in the future, was exhilarating. When I moved to the University of
Kansas, I met John E. Simmons, who introduced me to best practices in collections work and to SPNHC. I was intrigued to find a
group of like-minded people who were striving to standardize concepts that I considered fun and ensuring that these standards had
lasting and constructive effects on collections. I was converted and
proud when John and I published a paper advocating for managers
of such collections to be seen as professionals in their own right.
After study at the American Museum of Natural History in New
York, I became the project manager on an NSF project to digitize
a natural history collection. At that point my career path was set. I
not only love natural history collections, but I learned to believe in
museums and feel committed to their mission.
Since joining SPNHC in 1997 and attending my first meeting in
September 2017 * 5

http://www.spnhc.org

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