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 Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has announced that it has entered into a contract with the White Oak Institute and the American Association of Museums (AAM) to develop standard data definitions in collaboration with the museum field. This work is part of the agency’s museum data collection project, Museums Count. “We are […]
New research published in the Journal of Ecology demonstrates one of the many values of natural history collections. Researchers in the United Kingdom have shown that preserved plant specimens can be used in place of field observations to determine the impacts of climate change on phenology. The team compared specimens of early spider orchids (Ophrys […]
On September 15, 2010, the Natural Science Collections Alliance (NSC Alliance) joined 13 other scientific organizations to express concern “with the issue of intellectual property rights and ownership of research results that arise in the aftermath of incidents caused by industry, most recently, the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.†In a letter […]
On September 16, 2010, the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) and the Ecological Society of America (ESA) issued an open letter urging the Russian government to preserve the Pavlovsk Experiment Station in Saint Petersburg. The facility is home to more than 5,000 distinct varieties of fruit trees and plans, most of which are extinct […]
Dr. Cora Marrett, Acting Director of the National Science Foundation, recently distributed a Dear Colleague letter announcing that NSF has initiated the process for selecting a new Assistant Director for Education and Human Resources. The text of her letter follows: We are initiating a national search for the National Science Foundation’s Assistant Director for Education […]
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a new grant program, “Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections,†for scientific collections. According to NSF documents, the program seeks to “create a national resource of digital data documenting existing biological collections and to advance scientific knowledge by improving access to digitized information (including images) residing in vouchered scientific […]
Two years ago as the economy was entering recession, the Natural Science Collections Alliance launched a survey to gather data on the effects of the economic downturn on natural science collections. To further increase our understanding of how natural science collections are being impacted by and responding to current economic conditions, the NSC Alliance is […]
The National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has updated its Best Practices for Biospecimen Resources. Major revisions include the addition of new sections on biospecimen resource management and operations and conflict of interest, expansion of recommendations related to custodianship and informed consent, and harmonization with current federal guidance documents and recommendations […]
On August 2, 2010, NSC Alliance submitted comments on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) draft Next Generation Strategic Plan. The comments identify the importance of NOAA’s scientific collections to the agency’s mission and call for the strategic plan to “address the curation of, and access to, the 40 scientific collections held by the […]
On 21 July, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a joint memorandum providing guidance to federal agencies on the formulation of science and technology priorities in the fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget. The four-page document includes a provision on federal science collections: “Agencies […]