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.
A new article published in Collection Forum explores the need for permit management within biodiversity collection management systems to digitally track legal compliance documentation. The paper discusses how the Nagoya Protocol mandates operating changes within U.S. biodiversity collections and describes how the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology has made changes to its procedures and […]
Join the U.S. National Museum of Natural History – Smithsonian (NMNH), Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio), and Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) for a two-day virtual event, Biodiversity Digitization: Celebrating a Decade of Progress, to be held September 22-23, 2021. The first two decades of the 21st century have seen huge gains in the digitization and […]
The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) and the USA Nagoya Protocol Action Group (USANPAG) are working with a number of member and sibling societies to raise awareness about policies that guide how we share and benefit from the study of biodiversity and sequence data. NSC Alliance is actively involved in the planning of these […]
The House Appropriations Committee has now advanced all twelve spending bills for fiscal year (FY) 2022, approving significant increases for most federal science agencies and programs. The spending bills will now be considered by the full House of Representatives. The overall allocation for the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill, which includes funding for […]
On June 28, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 345-67 to pass the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the Future Act (H.R. 2225), which would more than double NSF’s budget over five years and create a new Directorate for Science and Engineering Solutions (SES) to enable translational research. Introduced by House Science Committee Chairwoman […]
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSPT) has issued a request for information to help improve the effectiveness of federal scientific integrity policies. Specifically, the OSTP seeks stakeholder input on the effectiveness of current federal scientific integrity policies and needed areas of improvement, practices agencies could adopt to improve scientific integrity, and […]
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is soliciting stakeholder feedback on how it can carry out its statutory responsibility to ensure the availability of museum, library, and information services adequate to meet the essential information, education, research, economic, cultural, and civic needs of the people of the United States. IMLS is developing a five-year […]
NSC Alliance has joined nearly 50 scientific societies and organizations in calling on Congress to lead with science to understand and address the effects of climate change. Leading with science will be critical to understanding and addressing the effects of climate change, and the entire scientific community will play a role in addressing this emergency, […]
A new article published in PLoS Pathogens argues for leveraging natural history biorepositories for the proactive detection and mitigation of emerging infectious diseases. Natural history museum biorepositories form the backbone of a critically needed, decentralized, global network for zoonotic pathogen surveillance, yet this infrastructure remains marginally developed, underutilized, underfunded, and disconnected from public health initiatives, […]
Under President Biden’s budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2022, federal support for the Smithsonian Institution would grow by $69 million or 7 percent to $1.1 billion. This increase includes the congressionally mandated pay raise, funds to continue major renovation projects at the National Air and Space Museum and the Smithsonian Institution Building, and support […]