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.
Ten scientific organizations have joined together to sponsor a briefing for congressional policymakers on the economic returns associated with Federal government funding for scientific research. The briefing, “Research That Pays Off: The Economic Benefits of Federally Funded R&D†will be held on Friday, March 16, 2012. Two sessions have been planned. The first session is […]
iDigBio, the National Science Foundation funded National Resource for Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections, is organizing a workshop on specimen digitization to be held on 12 July 2012. The workshop will occur the day after the Botany 2012 conference. The workshop is designed to introduce current and future biological and paleontological specimen collections staff to […]
Determining Cultural Affiliation Review the tools and best practices for determining cultural affiliation as part of the requirements of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Each Federal agency and museum with control over Native American human remains must identify cultural affiliation if it can do so on the basis of reasonable belief. […]
The fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget request for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) would fund IMLS at $232.0 million, the same as the FY 2012 enacted level. Museum services would receive $29.4 million, which is unchanged from the current fiscal year. Funding for Research, Analysis, Evaluation and Data Collection, a budget line […]
On 24 February 2012 the NSC Alliance, Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, Association of Science Museum Directors, American Institute of Biological Sciences, and the American Association of Museums wrote to the National Science Foundation (NSF) regarding the agency’s proposed budget for support of scientific collections. Although the President’s recently released fiscal year […]
President Obama released a $3.8 trillion budget plan for fiscal year (FY) 2013 on 13 February 2012. According to the White House, the budget proposal would cut deficits by $4 trillion over the next decade and would avoid the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act signed into law in […]
The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is offering a $50,000 prize for the winner of the EOL Education Innovation Challenge. This international competition aims to foster development of educational software tools, services, or games using EOL content. The competition will award funding to the most scalable and innovative applications. Target audiences can include the general public, […]
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Review Committee will meet on 28-29 November 2012 in Washington, DC. The agenda for the meeting will include finalization of the Review Committee Report to Congress for 2012, the appointment of the subcommittee to draft the Review Committee’s Report to the Congress for 2013, and discussion of the […]
The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections will hold its annual meeting at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut from June 11-16, 2012. The meeting theme is: Emerging Technology and Innovation in Natural History Collections Management. Additional information is available at: http://peabody.yale.edu/collections/spnhc2012/home.
Cristián Samper, the director of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), will resign in July to become president and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society. Samper has served as director of NMNH since 2003. “It has been a privilege to serve at the Smithsonian as director of this great museum, with a team of […]