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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hi all,<br>
<br>
the European Consortium of nat. his. Collections is currently
developing such strategic goals, but they have early draft status
at the moment. Earlier Position papers are available here:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.cetaf.org_taxonomy_publications&d=AwMD-g&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=CLFZJ3fvGSmDp7xK1dNZfh6uGV_h-8NVlo3fXNoRNzI&m=Btwigzn4Ka_ZAZ6_1Uyrwr3f8nanfFzFXqc00-4H37g&s=iwfEUqhMdPmCqf-ccXp5RngTSY0lRrmCi6Sa5UcC2F0&e=">http://www.cetaf.org/taxonomy/publications</a><br>
<br>
However, as others already mentioned, at the moment there is a
strong focus on all those fancy advances (Digitisation, barcoding,
etc.), but we should not forget about the boring stuff:
collections. <br>
<br>
Collections are the foundation of all those nice outreaching
initiatives. And instead of creating soft language on "integration
of collections" which actually means shutting down and closing of
collections, loss of taxonomic expertise and conservation
knowledge, we should be careful not to risk and loose our
expertise. Instead, we have to develop further, as especially DNA
& tissue collections do not only need a lot of know-how in a
changing legal environment, but also towards collection care: for
long term storage, we are still in trial mode, there are no
standards and no best practice.<br>
<br>
At the same time, we and our ollections are confronted with a
massive loss in knowledge (retirement, staff cutting, discontinued
preparation skills, ...) and problems arising from usage of new
techniques (just want to mention climate control & air
pollutants). So preventive conservation should receive not only
sufficient recognition in strategic plans, but play a vital role.<br>
<br>
As siad before: our key business is collections. Without
collections, we are nothing.<br>
<br>
All the best<br>
Dirk<br>
<br>
<br>
Am 23.01.2015 um 00:38 schrieb Doug Yanega:<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/22/15 7:39 AM, Sublett, Clayton
wrote:<br>
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<p>Hi all,</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Our collection is working on a strategic plan, and, as
much as possible, I would like to work in goals of the
natural history collections community. Does anyone know
if there is a strategic vision for natural history
collections/museums? The Organization for Biological
Field Stations handed out a strategic vision at their 2013
meeting, and I was hoping something like this existed for
collections. Beyond the push to database, digitize, and
make collection data available online, I'm not sure about
the goals of the community. Any advice or input would be
greatly appreciated.</p>
<br>
</div>
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</blockquote>
As others have already commented, though without much elaboration,
it strikes me that as a community most of our "strategy" boils
down to little more than damage control. Someone publishes a paper
in Science accusing collections-based scientists of driving
species to extinction, and we scramble to mobilize a rebuttal;
some adminstrators somewhere decide to shut down a major
collection, and we scramble to flood them with letters of support
for the threatened collection. Rinse and repeat. On the whole, we
are generally on the defensive, and we either hold our ground, or
lose it - we never seem to advance - and that is about all the
exposure we can expect to get. The average person is more
interested in reading their horoscope than in reading anyone's
mission statement, so unless we are acting in the role of
protesting something, and gaining visibility thereby, no one is
likely to pay any attention to us ("Don't it always seem to go
that you don't know what you've got til it's gone"). Even within
our own institutions, the higher administrative levels tend to
treat everything like a business, and very few collections -
especially if they have few or no public displays - actually
generate profit, and collections (like libraries) are therefore
more likely to be viewed as a form of charitable public service,
to be supported only so long as we don't cost TOO much to
maintain, relative to our PR value. It isn't clear to me, then,
how any amount of advocacy can really counteract such a
fundamental and unavoidable fact; most collections do not generate
more revenue than they consume, and never will. From an
administrator's point of view, a collection is a hole into which
money pours but never comes back out. How can we make real
advances and promote our interests when we owe our existence to
what amounts to charitable forbearance?<br>
<br>
More worrisome still, I will note that even within the community
that we serve, the role of traditional collections-based science
is being increasingly downplayed; the document Ellen Paul linked
earlier, for example, makes no explicit reference to legacy
material or vouchered specimens. There are many references to
"knowledge" and "information" and "data" (as well as three uses of
the term "molecular"), but nothing at all about museums or
specimens. One can only presume that this reflects an increasing
number of systematists who do not feel that their work requires
any such infrastructure. In essence, every single point in the
stated agenda can be accomplished without requiring the actual
physical archival of (or reference to) whole organismal specimens,
maintained in public depositories. If the explicit vision for the
future of systematics as a discipline extols the virtues of
molecular data but does not mention museums, then we are facing a
much deeper problem than being misunderstood by our
administrators; we are possibly looking at a future where the
taxonomic community that we have served for centuries considers us
irrelevant and archaic. Of the many taxonomists that have visited
our collection in the last several years, a fair number had little
or no interest in seeing or borrowing specimens that are more than
10 years old, because they only wanted material from which they
could potentially extract DNA - and I imagine that trend will
continue. How long can we argue to maintain legacy material if we
can't even point to taxonomists that rely upon it?<br>
<br>
Sincerely,<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314 skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__cache.ucr.edu_-7Eheraty_yanega.html&d=AwMD-g&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=CLFZJ3fvGSmDp7xK1dNZfh6uGV_h-8NVlo3fXNoRNzI&m=vwMAUPO4eZQ6KZ-JSKmCHcKrmT9OCkQnhY5yo4oQ9TE&s=gW1fnlhUmwcSJWwetl4lJu7drsNTMhAchXZ--SYUeOw&e=">http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html</a>
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82</pre>
<br>
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</pre>
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<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dirk Neumann
Tel: 089 / 8107-111
Fax: 089 / 8107-300
email: Dirk.Neumann(a)zsm.mwn.de
Postanschrift:
Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns
Zoologische Staatssammlung München
Dirk Neumann, Sektion Ichthyologie / DNA-Labor
Münchhausenstr. 21
81247 München
Besuchen Sie unsere Sammlung:
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---------
Dirk Neumann
Tel: +49-89-8107-111
Fax: +49-89-8107-300
email: Dirk.Neumann(a)zsm.mwn.de
postal address:
Bavarian Natural History Collections
The Bavarian State Collection of Zoology
Dirk Neumann, Section Ichthyology / DNA-Lab
Muenchhausenstr. 21
81247 Munich (Germany)
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