Natural Science Collections Alliance
Our members are part of an international community of museums, botanical gardens, herbariums, universities and other institutions that house natural science collections and utilize them in research, exhibitions, academic and informal science education, and outreach activities.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a five year grant to iDigBio to continue leading the national effort to digitize biodiversity collections and make them available online. The award of $15.5 million will continue the initiative, which is housed at the University of Florida and started in 2011. More than 64 million specimen records […]
Representatives David Joyce (R-OH) and Chellie Pingree (D-ME) are the recipients of the 2016 USGS Coalition Leadership Award. The pair was honored at a Capitol Hill ceremony and public reception on September 13th in Washington, DC. The Natural Science Collections Alliance is a member of the USGS Coalition. “The USGS Coalition is pleased to recognize […]
The Entomological Collections Network is the newest member of NSC Alliance. The group is dedicated to the promotion of entomological science through the preservation, management, use and development of entomological collections and taxonomy.
A coalition of fifty-six leading U.S. nonpartisan organizations, representing more than 10 million scientists and engineers, are calling on U.S. Presidential candidates to address a set of twenty major issues in science, engineering, health and the environment, and encouraging journalists and voters to press the candidates on them during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election season. […]
As reported by The Washington Post, a new species of dolphin was discovered within the Smithsonian’s collections. “It happens more often than you’d think: Research scientists go digging around the dusty collections of your local natural history museum and find species hitherto unknown to science. Whatever sits on display when you visit ancient human art, […]
According to a position statement issued by the Entomological Society of America, entomological collections and the staff that maintain them are an irreplaceable historical reference and are of vital importance to current and future life scientists. The statement, issued in January 2016, calls for the protection of “these irreplaceable resources, upon which the bulk of […]
iDigBio, the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, and the University of Michigan Herbarium are pleased to announce the inaugural Digital Data in Biodiversity Research Conference, to be held in Ann Arbor, MI, 5-6 June 2017. The rapid mobilization of digitized biodiversity data, led largely in the United States by the National Science Foundation’s Advancing […]
The Encyclopedia of Life is encouraging professors to include undergraduate and graduate students in creating content for the website. The Encyclopedia of Life is a global collaboration among scientists and the general public to make authoritative information and literature about all 1.9 million named species freely accessible online. Undergraduate and graduate students can contribute to […]
The Smithsonian Institution is among a handful of agencies that could receive a funding increase in fiscal year 2017, which starts on October 1, 2016. The House of Representatives passed legislation to fund the institution’s operations at $696.1 million, an increase of $16.4 million. In the committee report accompanying H.R. 5538, lawmakers called out the […]
Professors who are preparing their course content for the new semester may want to include a day for their students to participate in WeDigBio. The 2016 event will be held on October 20-23. Austin Mast, a professor at Florida State University and an organizer of WeDigBio, offers this suggestion of how to incorporate the worldwide […]