Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2019 - 6

Society Reports
Archives Committee
The Smithsonian Institution Archives
(SIA) houses the archives of the Society
for the Preservation of Natural History
Collections (SPNHC). SIA currently
holds 16 deposits of SPNHC material
totaling 23.5 cubic feet. Examples of
this material include Collection Forum,
SPNHC Connection newsletters, documentation of annual meetings, financial
files, election ballots, member-at-large files, various committee files, videos, CDs, and photographs.
The members of the archive committee act as liaisons between SIA and SPNHC. In preparation for the transfer to
SIA, the documentation and material related to the activity of
the Society are organized into archival boxes and a "finding
aid" is typed for each box. The material is arranged in folders
with year, type of documentation and a brief summary of the
folder's content. When known, files received from individuals are noted. Although the Society has moved to electronic
publications, these are printed and cataloged for deposit.
The finding aid, along with the boxes are transferred to SIA,
where an accession number is assigned to the deposit, and the
finding aid is uploaded to the SIA website.
Material, documentation, images, and publications have
been received from various sources and individuals since the
formation of this Archive Committee. Thirteen cubic feet of
material has been processed and is currently scheduled to be
transferred to SIA mid-August 2019. As we now move into
the digital age, the question about how to process and store
electronic images and photographs is being discussed. The
committee is working with SIA and will be transferring this
digital material to the archives later this year.
Respectfully submitted,
Carol Kelloff, Chair

Best Practices Committee
The Best Practices Committee continues to work to add new
content to the SPNHC wiki (http://spnhc.biowikifarm.net/
wiki). A page on the Digitization of Natural History Collections is now available, including links to important resources,
such as key references, webinars, workflows, and workshops.
A page on Fluid Collection Monitoring is also available that
includes methods for preventing evaporation and a best practice for "topping up" jars.
The current Best Practices Committee co-chairs have made
the decision that after five years of service they will step
6 * SPNHC Connection

down from their positions. New cochairs have been identified to ensure
sufficient overlap and time for knowledge transfer. Emily Braker (Collections
Manager of Vertebrate Zoology, Museum of Natural History, University of
Colorado Boulder) and Genevieve Tocci
(Senior Curatorial Technician, Harvard
University Herbaria) are currently contributing members of the Best Practices
Committee who will take over the leadership of the Best Practices Committee
at the annual meeting in Edinburgh,
Scotland, in 2020.
The Citations subcommittee is continuing to transfer citations from EndNote
to Zotero, which can be accessed online at https://www.
zotero.org/groups/2077962/spnhc/items. Once all citations
are migrated from EndNote, the Citations subcommittee will
continue to add to the Zotero library by importing new references as they are published. Only those members with Zotero
accounts have the ability to add citations, but the SPNHC
subcommittee hopes to identify mechanisms by which the
greater SPNHC membership can more easily contribute. Citations have been tagged with keywords, and future work by
the Citations subcommittee will include additional keywords
to assist in locating citations for specific topics.
Respectfully submitted,
Jessica Cundiff and Breda Zimkus, Co-chairs

Bylaws Committee
The Bylaws Committee is responsible
for the continued development of the
Society Bylaws, monitoring society
activities to ensure agreement with the
bylaws, and for periodic updates to the
Leadership Manual of the society.

Bylaws

No changes have been proposed to the
Society Bylaws.

Leadership Manual

With a new SPNHC website rolling out, the committee
reviewed the Committee Leadership Manuals (LM) to ensure
that they are consistent in data, formatting and calendar
items. Since the LM presentation on the new website will
change from pdf to webpage format, Bylaws is working with
the other committees on changes, along with the webmaster

https://www.zotero.org/groups/2077962/spnhc/items https://www.zotero.org/groups/2077962/spnhc/items http://spnhc.biowikifarm.net/wiki http://spnhc.biowikifarm.net/wiki

Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2019