Members of the Natural Science Collections Alliance can participate for free in the Biological Sciences Congressional District Visits event.

The event is an opportunity for museum directors and professionals, curators and collection managers, researchers, post docs, and graduate students to meet with their federal and state elected officials. Participants are encouraged to host their elected officials for a tour of their facilities. A tour is a particularly effective way to demonstrate the importance of scientific collections. Alternatively, participants may meet with lawmakers at their local district office.

The tour or meeting will be scheduled on the participant’s behalf. Participants will also be prepared for their meeting with a lawmaker through an interactive training webinar presented by the American Institute of Biological Sciences.

Participation is free, but registration will close on July 12, 2015. To register, visit www.aibs.org/public-policy/congressional_district_visits.html.

The NSC Alliance, the Biodiversity Collections Network (formerly Network Integrated Biocollections Alliance Research Coordination Network), and iDigBio sponsored the Plenary Session at the 2015 Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections conference in Gainesville, Florida.

Talks from the opening session were recorded and are being posted online. The first set of talks are now online and may be accessed here.