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<p class="elementToProof" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="font-family: docs-Roboto, serif; font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(32, 33, 36); background-color: white; line-height: 115%;">In 2020 an ad hoc committee of the National Academies
of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released its report </span><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><i>Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical
Research and Education for the 21st Century</i>. Recommendation 8-1 of the report included establishment of a national Action Center for biological collections, which was codified into law by the U.S. Congress as part of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.
In 2023 a series of webinars and national workshops was convened to envision the action center. The recommendations of these workshops are itemized in the attached white paper
<i>Envisioning a Natural History Collections Action Center. </i>A list of the participants in these workshops is included as the final pages of the white paper. Here we ask you to register your support of the findings presented. The results of this survey as
well as the white paper will be provided to the National Science Foundation.</span></p>
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<p class="elementToProof" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">On behalf of the organizers, many thanks!</span></p>
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<p class="elementToProof" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Gil</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: gray;">Gil Nelson PhD, Director</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: gray;">Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio)</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: gray;">Florida Museum of Natural History</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: gray;">University of Florida</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: gray;"><a href="mailto:gnelson@floridamuseum.ufl.edu" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">gnelson@floridamuseum.ufl.edu</a></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"><img alt="FM_logo_horizontal_CMYK" width="185" height="48" style="width: 1.937in; height: 0.51in; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;" data-outlook-trace="F:1|T:1" src="cid:6d821258-722a-4bb0-bdb4-5667a85afa0c"></span></p>
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