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.
National Fossil Day, an annual celebration organized by the National Park Service, will take place on October 17, 2018. National Fossil Day is a nationwide celebration that will include paleontology activities planned by partner organizations across the United States. NSC Alliance has a short document about the scientific value of fossil collections. The participation of […]
The Institute of Museums and Library Services has announced a new funding opportunity for small museums. Inspire! Grants for Small Museums is a special initiative of the Museums for America (MFA) program designed to motivate small museums to apply for grants to implement projects that address priorities identified in their strategic plans. The program includes […]
The White House has nominated Dr. J. Scott Angle to be Director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Mr. David Vela to be the Director of the National Park Service (NPS) at the Department of Interior (DOI). Dr. Angle, President and CEO of the International […]
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has announced the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) plan to reorganize its bureaus into 12 unified regions. The proposed management re-design establishes new regional divisions based on the boundaries of states and watersheds, including a California-Great Basin Region, a Lower Colorado Basin Region, an Upper Colorado Basin Region, and Mississippi Basin […]
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (NASEM) Board on Life Sciences (BLS) is seeking experts to serve on a committee that will review the contributions of biological collections in research and education. The expert panel will examine both living organisms and preserved biodiversity specimens that are supported by the National Science Foundation. The […]
The NSC Alliance Board of Directors recognizes that there are a growing number of policy issues confronting the natural science collections community. To more effectively engage in these issues and to support more coordinated community action related to matters of funding, regulation, research and training, among other issues, the NSC Alliance is convening a meeting […]
The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) will offer its Communications Training Boot Camp for Scientists this October 15-16, 2018. Students and staff affiliated with NSC Alliance member institutions are eligible to receive a significant discount off of the regular program registration rate. The AIBS Communications Training Boot Camp for Scientists was designed to enhance […]
A new article entitled, Digitizing Specimens-Legal Issues Abound, will appear in the September issue of the journal BioScience. The article is currently available as an Advance Access publication. The article examines legal issues arising from the digitization of museum specimens and making them publicly available, including ownership of images and data and the ability to […]
According to a report from WESA, Pittsburgh’s NPR News Station, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History will begin digitizing its collection of plant specimens. About one third of the herbarium’s over 500,000 specimens will be scanned to high-resolution photographs and made available through a search engine, which contains data and images of plants from hundreds […]
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have released a joint proposal to make significant revisions to regulations that implement the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and are inviting comments from the public for a period of 60 days. ESA was enacted in 1973 with the goal of […]