Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections October 2021 - 12

Society Reports
International Relations
The International Relations Committee
met virtually during the SPNHC
and AIC joint virtual annual meeting
in May. With the new virtual way of
working, in which we have all now become
familiar, we hope this can be used
to make the SPNHC meetings more
accessible to our international members
in the future.
We discussed the direction we should
be taking and agreed that this should
be led and integrated into the strategic
objectives of the society.
S. Ryder and T. Adrain agreed to work
through the enormous amount of past
membership and meeting data over the
coming year to get a clear record of SPNHC membership
over time. We hope to present this for the next meeting.
A SLACK channel was set up that allowed communication
and discussion of the International Relations Committee business.
This proved useful working across different time zones
during and post meeting.
Respectfully submitted,
Suzanne Ryder (Chair), Deb Paul (Deputy Chair)
US Federal Collections
Not reporting.
Janaki Krishna
SPNHC Representative Reports
The Alliance of Natural History Museums
of Canada
Not reporting.
Erica Wheeler
The American Institute for Conservation
of Historic & Artistic Works
Not reporting.
Gretchen Anderson
12 * SPNHC Connection
American Society of Ichthyologists and
Herpetologists
The 2021 and 101st annual ASIH meeting
occurred as part of the Joint Meeting
of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists
(JMIH). This meeting was hybrid and
had an in-person component held at
Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix,
Arizona, July 21-25, and a virtual component
July 26-27.
The JMIH was attended by around 700 people. This year the
ASIH Ichthyological and Herpetological Collections Committee
(IHCC) met virtually on August 5, 2021. The IHCC
meeting was well attended by collections personnel (including
several collections students). The IHCC meeting was
attended by 22 collections personnel, representing at least 25
institutions or collections. The meeting began with a discussion
about how the in-person JMIH meeting went with
COVID-19 protocols. The committee then discussed how
each institution was dealing their own COVID-19 protocols
and discussed various ways to deal with current restrictions.
The committee also discussed current efforts by members of
the collections community to require NSF-funded research
to submit " specimen management " plans in addition to the
already required data management plans. Work continues
on this by Andy Bentley and other colleagues. Adania Flemming
announced that she, along with some of her colleagues,
is planning to form a group focused on Black issues in a
museum setting. There was a great show of support from
the committee in this effort. Finally, the meeting ended with
a discussion about efforts by Randy Singer and colleagues
concerning an upcoming study to explore university-based
collection manager salaries, titles, and job requirements. He
plans to solicit as many US, university-based collections as
possible to collect data.
Respectfully submitted,
Randy Singer, SPNHC representative to ASIH
The American Society of Mammalogists
Beginning in 1972, the American Society of Mammalogists
(ASM) established a standing committee called the Systematic
Collections Committee, originally an ad hoc committee
formed at the request of the National Science Foundation.
The Society has defined this committee's responsibilities as
follows: (1) Advising curators worldwide in matters of collection
administration, curation, and accreditation; (2) Maintaining
a directory of mammal collections and conducting
Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections October 2021

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