Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections March 2020 - 16

Society Reports
lections managers, and news from the Lexicon Task Force. A
recently added feature is access to the Deaccession Toolbox
which contains a list of resources useful for anyone confronting deaccessioning issues.
The current leadership of CSAAM is Sebastián Encina, Chair
(collections manager for the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology
at the University of Michigan); Linda Endersby, Chair Elect
(Registrar and Collections Manager at the Museum of Art and
Archaeology at the University of Missouri); and Caitlin Podas, Secretary (Registrar at the Mingei International Museum
in San Diego, California).
Respectfully submitted,
John E. Simmons, SPNHC representative to the CSAAM

Entomological Collections Network
Background

ECN formed an MOU with SPNHC in
late 2016; this is our third full annual
report. ECN is a 501(c)(3) non-profit
international organization dedicated
to promoting entomological science
through the preservation, management,
use and development of entomological
collections and to disseminating information and fostering
communications between collections managers around the
world regarding best practices in entomological (and arthropod) natural history collections. The network is organized and
operated exclusively for scientific and educational purposes.

ECN 2019

The 2019 annual meeting of the Entomological Collections
Network (ECN) was held November 16-17, in St. Louis,
Missouri, USA, in conjunction with the annual meetings of
the Entomological Society of America. The two-day meeting
included 201 registered attendees. Additional data regarding
number of symposia, member symposia, posters, etc. can be
found in the program:
https://docs.google.com/
document/d/1eRiJfmx2YfKiGVUy97-CIZlfCQryYK1JDkpFSg-F_BA/edit?usp=sharing
New this year, the ECN was able to offer four students travel
scholarships of $250 each.
The ECN had a change of executive committee members,
though secretary, treasurer and social media remain (Christy
Bills, Patrick Gorring and Isa Bentancourt, respectively). The
president is now Chris Grinter and we have new program
chairs.

16 * SPNHC Connection

The Annual ECN Business Meeting was held November 16
(5:00-6:00 pm), followed by the ECN Mixer and Poster Session and the annual ECN banquet. All sessions and meetings
were held in the Marriott St. Louis Grand: Landmark Ballrooms 1, 2, 3.
Respectfully submitted,
Dan Young, SPNHC representative to ECN

Global Biodiversity Information Facility
SPNHC is an organizational Associate
Participant in the Global Biodiversity
Information Facility (GBIF: www.gbif.
org). James Macklin is the current GBIF
"Head of Delegation" for SPNHC,
TDWG as Chair of the Executive and
also currently serves as the Canadian
Node Manager. He participated in the
26th Annual GBIF Meeting in October
2019 in Leiden, Netherlands, held in concert with the Biodiversity_Next Conference.
GBIF continues to promote the digitization and mobilization
of biodiversity observation data and provide support through
making available a wide variety of tools, best practices and
documentation. In addition, if you have not looked at the
country-level information pages, I encourage you to do so
as they can be very informative. Numerous opportunities are
also available for training at various scales as well as competitions for funding to develop new tools and methods for data
mobilization, quality control, and dissemination. I encourage
all members to get involved and support this critical organization.
I would like to highlight one of the GBIF Young Researchers
Award recipients for 2019, Nicky Nicolson from the Royal
Botanic Gardens, Kew. Nicky won the award for her PhD research on using data mining and machine learning techniques
to identify collectors and duplicated herbarium specimens,
improving data and inferring connections between different
collections. This has long been a challenge close to my heart
and is a great example of research that is a direct benefit to
SPNHC members being recognized.
Lastly, a reminder for all to support GBIF and the biodiversity informatics community's unified vision to globally
coordinate biodiversity-based resources and infrastructures.
This is being realized through the formation of "An Alliance
for Biodiversity Knowledge." I encourage everyone to go to
the new website and learn more about the concept of this new
initiative and consider signing on as an individual or organizational/institutional participant: "Join us in the next phase -

http://www.gbif.org http://www.gbif.org https://www.biodiversitynext.org/ https://www.biodiversitynext.org/ https://www.gbif.org/news/4n8ZCfuK3zxseKAHRMcfA8/award-winner-uses-data-mining-and-machine-learning-to-identify-collectors-and-duplicated-herbarium-specimens https://www.gbif.org/news/4n8ZCfuK3zxseKAHRMcfA8/award-winner-uses-data-mining-and-machine-learning-to-identify-collectors-and-duplicated-herbarium-specimens https://www.gbif.org/news/4n8ZCfuK3zxseKAHRMcfA8/award-winner-uses-data-mining-and-machine-learning-to-identify-collectors-and-duplicated-herbarium-specimens https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eRiJfmx2YfKiGVUy97-CIZlfCQryYK1JDkpFSg-F_BA/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eRiJfmx2YfKiGVUy97-CIZlfCQryYK1JDkpFSg-F_BA/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eRiJfmx2YfKiGVUy97-CIZlfCQryYK1JDkpFSg-F_BA/edit?usp=sharing https://www.biodiversityinformatics.org/en/ https://www.biodiversityinformatics.org/en/

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