[NHCOLL-L:3715] Update: NSCA-NSF survey

[Marcy Revelez]

Dear NSCA member and collection professional:

The following email clarifies NSF's position regarding their  
collection survey that is currently underway. Unfortunately, NSF is  
not able to expand the list of collections that are sampled beyond  
the institutions and collections that were originally selected for  
the survey. I misunderstood this limitation in encouraging you to  
register with NSF to participate in the survey if your institution or  
collection were not one of those selected by NSF for sampling.  
However, the NSCA is a partner of a National Science Foundation  
Research Coordination Network (RCN) grant that was recently funded  
that will help identify and develop the nation's natural science/ 
collections community. Along these lines, there will be a survey of  
all collections by the principal investigators, Alan Prather and Hank  
Bart, sometime within the next couple of years. It is my hope that  
your collection and institution, whether or not it is a part of the  
NSF survey, will be able to be considered in this much larger survey  
of the collections of the United States.

Dr. Michael A. Mares
President, Natural Science Collections Alliance

Dr. Michael A. Mares
Presidential Professor, Research Curator, and Former Director
Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
2401 Chautauqua
University of Oklahoma
Norman, OK  73072
phone: 405-325-90

Begin forwarded message:

___________

Dear Colleagues,
The National Science Foundation is conducting a survey of scientific  
collections that have received support from the Foundation through  
its various programs. You may have received an email request to  
participate in the survey if your institution and collection were  
recipients of such support. The survey is part of an effort directed  
by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to  
document the status of federally owned and supported collections in  
the United States ( http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda/fy2006/ 
m06-17.pdf ). The survey will supply the OSTP with essential  
information and help provide the information needed to support the  
nation's research capacity. Note, if you did not receive a survey, it  
does not mean your collection or institution is not considered  
important by NSF.  At this point, the sample cannot be expanded.  We  
based our sampling on award records at NSF, and if we missed a few  
potential respondents, please accept our apologies.

Two types of surveys are being distributed. One is to administrators,  
such as Vice Presidents of Research or similar officials; and one to  
Collection Managers or Curators. They are similar, and if you are a  
manager or curator, your administration may ask you for help with  
some of the questions. The reason there are two types is so that  
administrators can answer questions more broadly to include all the  
collections at their institutions, regardless of whether some may not  
have been the direct recipients of support. This will provide a much  
broader overview than we could achieve by surveying individual  
collections.

The survey is not designed to be burdensome really! It should take an  
hour or less to complete and can be filled out online. If you have  
questions about the mechanics or nature of the survey, please ask us  
via email (collsurv at nsf.gov).

If you have not received a survey request (they went out on January  
15, 2008 or earlier) and think you should, please contact us. Thank  
you very much for your contribution to this effort to strengthen  
scientific collections.

Sincerely,
Dr. Judy Skog, Director, Division of Biological Infrastructure
Dr. Richard McCourt, Program Director, Division of Biological  
Infrastructure
Ms. Jessica Corman, Science Assistant
National Science Foundation
collsurv at nsf.gov





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