Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2020 - 7

Society Reports
a highly successful digital conference.
With numerous live streams via Zoom
and YouTube and over 1900 registered
attendees, the virtual conference was
a major event to plan and deliver in a
very short period, and our thanks go
to all involved for making it a highly
successful and inclusive conference.
The experiences gained from the virtual
conference have since been disseminated via two webinars
"Executing Virtual Events: Lessons learned from Digital
Data & SPNHC Conference Planners" as part of the iDigBio
series Adapting to COVID-19: Resources for Natural History
Collections in a New Virtual World. The hard work put into
planning of the original Edinburgh 2020 conference will not
go to waste as the conference has now been pushed forward
to 2022, and will be in partnership with the Biodiversity Heritage Library (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/).
As reported at the 2020 ABM, there have also been further
challenges for the proposed hosting of the 2021 annual conference which was planned for San Francisco in 2021, and
this has now been pushed forward to 2023. This left a gap for
the hosting of the 2021 conference, further complicated by
the ongoing uncertainties with the Covid19 situation. Fortunately, SPNHC was contacted by the American Institute
for Conservation (AIC), and asked if we would be a partner
in their 2021 conference in Jacksonville, Florida. This was
agreed upon at the 2020 ABM. This conference presents a
different way of working again for SPNHC, particularly as
it is not based around a hosting institution, and lacks the
traditional LOC to coordinate the conference planning. The
Conference Committee has thus formed a subgroup from
volunteers to work closely with AIC on the conference.
The call for papers to the SPNHC community has just been
released and further information can be found at https://www.
culturalheritage.org/events/annual-meeting/future-meetings/
meeting-2021. Planning for this conference remains flexible
to deal with potential issues around Covid19, and we look
forward to working closely with AIC on the Jacksonville
conference.
The main Conference Committee is yet to convene, but there
will be much for the past and future conference representatives to share and develop. It is clear that the virtual element
will be an increasingly important part of our conferences,
enabling us to connect with our community in a much wider
and more equal way. However, this will also bring the challenge of how this is balanced with the traditional physical
conference. We welcome your comments, thoughts and ideas,
so please feel free to contact the Conference Committee via
https://spnhc.org/meetings/.

Respectfully submitted,
Julian Carter, Chair

Conservation Committee
The Conservation Committee (CC) met
virtually during the June 2020 SPNHC
meeting and discussed ways to participate in the 2021 joint meeting with the
American Institute for Conservation
(AIC). Many members of the CC are
also members of AIC and will be lending a hand in the planning. Based on
feedback from our discussion, we are
hoping to offer workshops that would
benefit members of both groups. If the
2021 meeting must move to virtual
sessions, the CC will adapt workshop
content to virtual, where appropriate.
Other updates of interest to CC members from the Materials Selection and
Specification Working Group (MWG) of AIC:
*

The Materials Testing Committee is currently in the second round of the testing round robin, where multiple labs
test the same materials with the same methods. They are
using Oddy tests, spot tests, and GC/MS analysis.

The Standards and Specifications Committee is building
material fact sheets for CAMEO. They are looking for
volunteers to help gather information and code for the
wiki. There are conservation students helping with the
effort, but they will need materials end users like preparators and designers to provide information as well. Check
out the fact sheets on Medex and Obomodulan for a
sample of the work so far.

The Resource and Dissemination Committee is working
on editing and updating the 1999 National Park Service
Exhibition Guidelines, currently available on the AIC
wiki.

Respectfully submitted,
Fran Ritchie and Rebecca Newberry, Co-chairs

Elections Committee
Not reporting
Bethany Palumbo, Chair

September 2020 * 7

https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/ http://cameo.mfa.org/wiki/Main_Page http://cameo.mfa.org/wiki/Medex http://cameo.mfa.org/wiki/Obomodulan https://www.culturalheritage.org/events/annual-meeting/future-meetings/meeting-2021 https://www.culturalheritage.org/events/annual-meeting/future-meetings/meeting-2021 https://www.culturalheritage.org/events/annual-meeting/future-meetings/meeting-2021 http://www.conservation-wiki.com/wiki/Exhibition_Standards_%26_Guidelines https://spnhc.org/meetings/

Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2020

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