[NHCOLL-L:4100] Consortium of Northeastern Herbaria

[Patrick Sweeney]

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Dear Colleagues,

Representatives of herbaria from throughout the northeastern United  
States and eastern Canada have been meeting informally for several  
years to talk about ways in which we can collaborate to make our  
specimen information available online. These initial discussions now  
have borne fruit with the creation of the Consortium of Northeastern  
Herbaria (CNH).

This group is similar to “nodes” of herbaria in other regions of the  
U.S. and the world – all working on digitization of specimen  
information and the linking of biological collections through networks  
like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).

Members of the Consortium of Northeastern Herbaria hope to represent  
the interests of all of the official plant collections in the area –  
from large ones such as Harvard with millions of specimens to the very  
smallest with only a single herbarium cabinet. We can best do this if  
many of the region’s herbaria participate in our discussions. It is in  
that spirit that we invite you to join the consortium. Even if you are  
not at present able to actively participate, we want to keep you  
informed about our activities.

The consortium was formally organized during a meeting on June 2,  
2008, at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Those attending  
that meeting agreed that the consortium would be established with an  
interim government structure based around a steering committee and  
that we should establish a web presence. To facilitate this process, a  
Google group was created (<http://groups.google.com/group/neahc? 
hl=en>); all activities and discussions that have taken place since  
the June meeting can be viewed there. Now that the goals set during  
the meeting have been accomplished, you will be able to keep track of  
our continuing discussions at that site or follow our activities at <http://neherbaria.org 
 >.

The mission statement of the consortium states that our initial  
interest is: “to provide online access to specimen data housed in  
member institutions, with particular emphasis on collections from the  
region.”  The region includes the states and provinces of Connecticut,  
Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York,  
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Brunswick, Newfoundland &  
Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec. Subsidiary goals state  
that we will share information that will help herbaria with  
digitization projects, facilitate herbarium-based research and  
conservation, and coordinate with other regional networks that are  
involved in making their specimen information available online.

Our next steps will be to adopt a more formal governance structure and  
to decide how best to go about achieving our goal of making herbarium  
information available online, including the possibility of seeking  
grant money.

If you are interested in joining us in these activities, we would  
welcome your participation. Simply visit the membership page on the  
CNH web site: <http://neherbaria.org/membership>.

Our next meeting will be June 8-9, 2009, at the University of New  
Hampshire-Durham. We hope you can join us there. At this meeting there  
will be informative talks and a variety of hands-on workshops dealing  
with collection databasing using Specify, imaging, and other  
biodiversity informatics topics. Meanwhile, you can follow our  
activities on our web page, which is still in development. More  
information will be added in the coming months.

Sincerely,
CNH Steering Committee