Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections March 2020 - 14

Society Reports
- Remote mentoring? via SLACK channel we are setting
up perhaps?
Respectfully submitted,
Suzanne Ryder, Chair
Deborah L. Paul, Deputy Chair

Member-at-Large Reports
Amanda N. Lawrence
This season I met with the Education
Sessional Committee where we discussed ways that SPNHC contributes
to formal and informal education. The
Sessional Committee is working with
the Emerging Professionals Committee and the Professional Development Committee to identify areas of
improvement regarding education and
training. I've also worked with the Mentorship subcommittee,
which is within the Professional Development Committee, to
help produce a frequently asked questions page for the 2020
conference. I am working with the subcommittee to develop
an evaluation form for the upcoming mentorship program.
Respectively submitted,
Amanda N. Lawrence, MAL (2017-2020)

Deborah Paul
Want to help a researcher (from any
country!) get access to EU biocollections? You can do this right now by
spreading the word about potential
funding for researcher access to EU
collections: Transnational and Virtual
Access. These are EU funds through
the SYNTHESYS+ design project for
DiSSCo. If awarded, a researcher (and their group) get a specific set of collections digitized, or they get funding to visit
the EU and study the collections of interest directly. For this
funding round, the call for proposals ends March 26, 2020,
for Transnational, and April 30, 2020, for Virtual Access, so
don't wait!
With all the worldwide efforts to digitize, 3D print, and image bio/geocollections, we find ourselves in the middle of an
incredible evolution in access to specimen data. We do have
a SPNHC Slack Channel now, and in a sense, it's a parallel
evolution in access to each other's expertise and experiences,
14 * SPNHC Connection

at least in addition to the listserv and once-a-year at the meeting-on the dance-floor! (Can you say Ceilidh?)
The SPNHC Digitization wiki resource continues to grow,
please be sure to visit and be sure to let us know if you want/
need to add some great resource that is not there yet.
How many of you use wikipedia or contribute to it? (What
an incredible resource! Yes, there are issues, but it certainly
raises website and resource discovery). Thanks to all who
answered my NHCOLL-L and Twitter requests for some help
to start a conversation with #Wikidatans, especially those
who may be affiliated with collections already. Much of our
collective knowledge about collections, taxonomy, related literature, collectors and curators, resides in collection management databases-and in your heads (such cognitive surplus)!
If we want to achive 5-star Linked Open Data (and we do :)
), you can help by sharing this information on Wikidata, and
it's not hard! I'll post my upcoming talk and link it in the next
report. Meanwhile, check out the Wikidata Welcome page to
learn more.
Respectively submitted,
Deborah L. Paul, MAL (2017-2020)
Not Reporting:
Talia Karim (2018-2021)
Fran Ritchie (2018-2021)
Paul Mayer (2019-2022)
Anna Monfils (2019-2022)

SPNHC Representative Reports
Association of Registrars and Collections Specialists
The very successful biennial meeting of the international Association of
Registrars and Collections Specialists
(ARCS) took place November 7-9,
2019, in Philadelphia with more than
800 participants in attendance. At the
close of the conference it was announced that the next ARCS biennial
meeting will take place in Montreal, Canada, in November
2021.
In 2020 ARCS will continue to host evening social events for
registrars and collections specialists at locations in the United
States and around the world as well as podcasts and workshops (please check the ARCS website,
https://www.arcsinfo.org/programs/socials, for more informa-

https://spnhc.biowikifarm.net/wiki/Digitization https://spnhc.biowikifarm.net/wiki/Digitization#Contributors https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page https://www.synthesys.info/news-events/2020-access-dates-announced.html https://www.synthesys.info/news-events/2020-access-dates-announced.html https://www.synthesys.info/ https://www.dissco.eu/what-is-dissco/ https://spnhc.slack.com/ https://www.arcsinfo.org/programs/socials

Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections March 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections March 2020