8 January 2008

Sherry Hutt, Manager
National NAGPRA Program
National Park Service
1849 C Street NW, 20006-2253
Washington, D.C. 20240

Ref: NSC Alliance Comments on Docket No. 1024-AC84

The Natural Science Collections Alliance, the largest professional organization
of natural history museums in North America, opposes the proposed changes
to the regulations governing application of the Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA).

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The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced that it has awarded a Research Coordination Network (RCN) grant to contribute to the development of the natural history collections community in the United States. “A stronger community will facilitate research by providing better lines of communication between collections managers and researchers, and establishing improved mechanisms for access to specimens and specimen data,” said L. Alan Prather, curator of the herbarium at Michigan State University and one of the principal investigators for the grant. To achieve the goals of the RCN, the funding will be used for a number of web resources for the collections community, a series of workshops and symposia dealing with issues of importance relating to collections, and several student internships.

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