[NHCOLL-L:1971] Fwd: Re: Fwd: Re: Ironic Quotes from Bioscience

[Doug Yanega]

Robin Panza wrote:

>  >>>From: carabid at mpm.edu [mailto:carabid at mpm.edu]
>Unfortunately we do not have a single systematics organization that all of
>us can regularly attend and participate in. We are split up into ologies,
>entomology, botany,  mammology, ornithology, etc. The Society of Systematic
>Biology used to be for systematists but now as far as I can tell from the
>Journal is only for molecular workers. <<<
>
>What about the Natural Science Collections Alliance (formerly Association of
>Systematics Collections)?  It is an association for professionals in NH
>museums and collections, rather than specifically systematists (some of whom
>are not associated with a collection), but it is definitely a national
>advocacy organization for museum collections and organism-based systematics.

This is not the same. NSCA is, as you say, an advocacy group for 
collections - and the annual dues are more than many University 
collections can afford, especially when our budgets are being cut 
(UCR, for example, would, based on its holdings, be categorized as an 
"international collection," meaning NSCA membership, which charges by 
the category, would cost nearly half our present operating budget). 
It's not that they don't perform a useful service, but we as a 
community need a lot more than what they offer. To reiterate from an 
earlier posting of mine: "We need an umbrella support organization 
that aggressively seeks out, obtains, and then distributes large 
amounts of money - *TO* its members - and perhaps even takes over the 
administration of natural history collections *directly*, so they are 
no longer subject to the whims of people who don't even have a clue 
about the value of a collection." To use the most recent example, if 
the University of Arkansas has decided to eliminate its museum, we 
presently can't stop them. If we had a powerful enough support 
organization, however, we could potentially step in, seek out 
sponsors and supporters from throughout Arkansas and elsewhere 
(surely there are wealthy people from Arkansas, or U of A alumni), 
and - if the University couldn't be persuaded to reconsider (by 
helping them out of their budget problems with an amount of money 
equal to their anticipated recovered costs) - then use enough money 
to basically buy out the University's controlling interests, so they 
*can't* close the museum. Set up an endowment, pay salaries, 
whatever. Tough, yes, but hopefully not impossible. The problem could 
become overwhelming if too many museums are dumped by their host 
institutions, of course - and that may yet come to pass.

What Gerry is saying is more specific, targeting systematics research 
as the thing which needs to be unified and supported, more than the 
collections themselves. This, obviously, is not going to be a 
*universal* concern of members of this mailing list, which is why I 
rolled the collections and the people who work in and with them into 
the same package. Systematists who do not use museum collections (a 
subset of those who do molecular systematics, and a few specialized 
groups) are not likely to fight on behalf of those who do, especially 
since they're having fewer problems finding faculty positions or 
funding presently. Besides which, collections in general have a 
broader support base among the populace than do systematists per se, 
and we need to capitalize (literally!) on this. I think of it as a 
two-step process: first we need to secure the futures of our museums 
and collections, and *then* we fill them with museum-based 
researchers. Creating a new generation of systematists is pointless 
if they have nowhere to work, and all the specimens are in landfills.

Either way, this is completely different from what NSCA is about.

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82