Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections March 2020 - 12

Society Reports
through https://collectionforum.org/ and require member
login. Thanks to Membership Online Access Assistant Sara
Ketelsen for maintaining the membership lists to ensure that
paid members have access to the most recent issues, and to
Carol Kelloff for maintaining the SPNHC archives. For any
access concerns that may arise, please contact editor@spnhc.
org.
For questions about the Publications Committee, please use
the following contact emails:
Collection Forum editor@spnhc.org
SPNHC Connection newsletter@spnhc.org
Leaflets bzimkus@oeb.harvard.edu
Respectfully submitted,
Mariel Campbell, Chair

Recognition & Grants Committee
The Recognition and Grants Committee
is charged with promoting and reviewing the various awards of the society,
which are in recognition of a member's
service, vendor recognition, as well as
the Faber Innovation grant.
A change in the wording of the Faber
Innovation Grant was approved by
Council and implemented for this year's call for grant submittals, which seemed successful since several queries were
received. Grant proposals are currently being reviewed for
potential funding and announcement at the 2020 SPNHC
meetings in Edinburgh, Scotland.
With the recent rollout of the new SPNHC website, the committee is also reviewing the pages for awards and recognition,
and identifying content that needs updating and/or correcting.
Respectively submitted,
Linda S. Ford, Chair

Web & Social Media Committee
The new website is up and running and
there have been only a few kinks that
are still being worked out. The 2020
membership drive is in full force, and
if you have not done so, please log into
the website to renew your membership.
If you have any issues with the new
renewal system, please contact Tiffany
Adrain at membership@spnhc.org.
12 * SPNHC Connection

And, don't forget to send job postings and calendar events to
webmaster@spnhc.org.
Respectfully submitted,
Liath Appleton, Chair

Sessional Committees
Collection Theft and Security Monitoring of Collections
We will be running a symposium at the
SPNHC annual meeting in Edinburgh
and encourage all interested members
to submit an abstract and/or please send
recommendations for potential speakers.
S6.3 Collection Theft and Security
Monitoring of Collections, Organisers:
Mr Paul Mayer1, Mr. Rob Zschernitz1
1The Field Museum, Chicago, United
States
Something has been stolen - what
now? This was raised as a question in
response to the plenary talk and discussions by Kirk Wallace Johnson, author
of The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of
the Century at last year's SPNHC meeting in Chicago.
This symposium will investigate and try to develop best
practice policies on how to prevent thefts and how to handle
sharing information on thefts.

Preventative Actions
1. Education: engaging the communities who may be at
higher risk and educating them as to the importance and
scientific value of the collections.
2. Heightened Security: balancing between acceptable
levels of security and either alienating the community or
discouraging use of the collections.
3. Risk assessment: identifying higher risk objects and
higher risk visitors.

Communication Channels
1. Using listservs and social media to alert the community
of thefts.
2. The use of automated alerts.
3. Monitoring social media.

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Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections March 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections March 2020