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 2013 budget request is generally supportive of science, NSF proposes to change the Collections in Support of Biological Research program from an annual to biennial competition. The change would effectively cut the program’s funding in half.
The CSBR program provides vitally important support to our nation’s biological sciences research collections. The program is considered by some to be besieged by more grant proposals than it can support. A biennial funding system would likely exacerbate the situation.
Click here to download a copy of the joint society letter.