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

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  1. Building a National Community of Natural History Collections A Research Coordination Network Jim Woolley Texas A&M University collectionsweb.org

  2. 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 collectionsweb.org

  3. RCN STEERING COMMITTEE Alan Prather Michigan State University alan@msu.edu Henry L. Bart Tulane University hank@museum.tulane.edu Meredith Blackwell Louisiana State Universitymblackwell@lsu.edu Jim Woolley Texas A & M UniversityJamesWoolley@tamu.edu Karen Francl Radford Universitykfrancl@radford.edu collectionsweb.org

  4. 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 collectionsweb.org

  5. 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? collectionsweb.org

  6. 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 collectionsweb.org

  7. 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 collectionsweb.org

  8. 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 collectionsweb.org

  9. PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS • Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections • Natural Science Collections Alliance • American Institute of Biological Sciences collectionsweb.org

  10. 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. collectionsweb.org

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