BUILDING A NATIONAL COMMUNITY OF NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS

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Building a National Community of Natural History
Collections
A Research Coordination Network
Jim Woolley Texas AM University
collectionsweb.org
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Goal of the RCN BUILD A COMMUNITY OF NATURAL
HISTORY COLLECTIONS

• Identify the institutions and people that define
  the natural history collections community and
  facilitate dialogue about how best to serve
  needs of collections and researchers
• Identify major challenges and opportunities in
  the current environment and foreseeable future,
  and develop a strategic plan for the future of
  collections research
• Determine how to strengthen and modernize the
  role of collections in education and outreach
• Identify the primary needs of collections
  regarding care, curation, storage and
  accessibility

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RCN STEERING COMMITTEE
Alan Prather Michigan State University alan_at_msu.e
du
Henry L. Bart Tulane University hank_at_museum.tulane
.edu
Meredith Blackwell Louisiana State
Universitymblackwell_at_lsu.edu
Jim Woolley Texas A M UniversityJamesWoolley_at_t
amu.edu
Karen Francl Radford Universitykfrancl_at_radford.e
du
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An Update on Activities - 2008

• FIRST WORKSHOP on Small Collections, East
  Lansing, MI
• Next Workshop - Fairbanks, Alaska, June 2009
• Third Workshop - probably New Orleans, Fall 2009?
• Bioinformatics and collections
• Survey of Collections
• Internships

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Workshop II - Systematics and CollectionsJune
2009, Fairbanks, Alaska

• Broaden participation by systematics community in
  the RCN
• Starting points for discussion
• What makes a collection successful?
• What is role of natural history collections in
  contemporary systematic biology, including
  molecular systematics, bioinformatics and
  cybertaxonomy?
• How can natural history collections enable and
  facilitate new research paradigms in other
  disciplines, including developmental biology,
  behavior, evolutionary biology, ecology, and
  molecular and cellular biology?
• Present a strong case to NSF for increasing the
  budget for Biological Research Collections
  program
• Every program at NSF can argue for more funding
  based on proposal pressure and dismal funding
  rates. What is special about BRC?

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Survey of Natural History Collections

• Following surveys of Federally-Supported
  Collections (NSF) and Federal Collections
  (Interagency Working Group on Scientific
  Collections)
• Will be based on last ASC survey
• Working from list of 1600 collections in US
• Collections can update their data on-line

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Two Internships available in summer 2009

• 4000 each, to be paid from MSU
• Interdisciplinary work on CollectionsWeb related
  activies
• Good opportunity for undergraduates, particularly
  those interested in natural history collections
  issues or policy

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Core Participants from ECN Community

• Chris Dietrich, Entomological Society of America
• Nico Franz, Small Collections Workshop
• Chris Marshall, Small Collections Workshop
• John Morse, North American Benthological Society
• Michael Wall, Entomology Collections Network
• Jim Woolley, Steering Committee of the RCN
• Five new Core Participants to be elected in 2009
• Will be soliciting nominations from collections
  community
• Two Core Participants will added to the Steering
  Committee

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PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS

• Society for the Preservation of Natural History
  Collections
• Natural Science Collections Alliance
• American Institute of Biological Sciences

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

• Funding for the RCN is generously provided by
  the US NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (NSF-0639214
  to Michigan State University)
• Disclaimer This material is based upon work
  supported by the National Science Foundation
  under Grant No. 0639214. Any opinions, findings,
  and conclusions or recommendations expressed in
  this material are those of the authors and do not
  necessarily reflect the views of the National
  Science Foundation.

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