[Nhcoll-l] Announcing the retirement of Pina Milne, Collections Manager, National Herbarium of Victoria (MEL)

Thu Nov 11 20:28:36 EST 2021

Hello Everybody

After 25 years at the National Herbarium of Victoria (MEL) progressing to Collections Manager for the final 15 years, Pina (Josephine) Milne has decided to retire. Today we fondly farewell her as she departs to spend  more time with family, do some travelling and hopefully soon will return to work on the bryophyte collection.

Pina has been a fantastic colleague and steward of the Herbarium collection, and has made numerous  contributions across the organisation, a valued member of team Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.  The depth of knowledge that she has built up about the collection, the importance of the collections for research, the development and implementation of protocols to protect a collection that is in a building that is substandard and out of space is a testament to her lateral thinking and commitment to conserving and enhancing the State Botanical Collection.  She has also overseen important changes to workflows as we have moved into the digital space.  These include contributions to the Australasians Virtual Herbarium Project, the first real effort to database our specimen records. The massive task of migrating over 800,000 database records into a new database system with consequent flow on to work practices and processes.  She lead the efforts to locate and digitise our types specimens for the International Global Plants project.  The type specimens held in the Herbarium are a significant global resource and it is likely this type collection is inside the top 30 globally by size (out of 3,000 herbarium collections globally).  More recently Pina has overseen the drive to curate the global collection and prepare the collection for digitisation.  These are just a few of the contributions Pina has made and does not cover the leadership she has provided to the broader National herbarium community through her roles on the Manager of Australasian Herbaria Collections.

In reflecting on the role of Manager Collections I would say that any role within a cultural collecting institution the incumbent is part of a long line of predecessors that has stewardship of the cultural assets.  The key objective being to leave the collection in a better position than when you took over the stewardship of it.  Pina has exceeded on this measure the State Botanical Collection is in a much better place as a collection despite the building it is housed in being manifestly inadequate in terms of space, working environment and protection.  Whoever fills the role of Manager Collections has huge boots to fill.  We wish her all the best.

David Cantrill
(Executive Director Science, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria)

Sally Stewart
Librarian
Library

[cid:RBG-Victoria-Online(Email)_61b4056e-de16-4315-b067-c52b3b2e66db.jpg]

Birdwood Avenue
Melbourne Victoria 3004
T +61 3 9252 2320<tel:+61%203%209252%202320>
Sally.Stewart at rbg.vic.gov.au<mailto:Sally.Stewart at rbg.vic.gov.au>
rbg.vic.gov.au<http://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/>
[cid:FaceBook(FB-Email)_87911c07-4e8c-45b8-bc61-2816d736bd6e.png]<https://www.facebook.com/BotanicGardensVictoria/>  [cid:Twitter(Twit-Email)_ba5f6c37-582a-4484-8808-a9a75ff76319.png] <https://twitter.com/RBG_Victoria>   <https://www.instagram.com/royalbotanicgardensvic/> [cid:Instagram(Insta-Email)_19213193-109a-42db-bbd9-8088460bb1cb.png] <https://www.instagram.com/royalbotanicgardensvic/>

<https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/support-us/our-donors/>[cid:2021_rbgv_eoyappeal_esignature_d1b98e8c-eab5-451a-b8a6-2180789d54a8.jpg]<https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/support-us/excursions/>

<https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/branchout?utm_campaign=branch-out&utm_medium=esignature&utm_source=email&utm_content=rbgv-spring><https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/schoolholidays?utm_campaign=spring-school-hols-19&utm_medium=profile&utm_source=instagram&utm_content=skedlink><http://www.melbournelightscape.com.au/><https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/schoolholidays?utm_campaign=summer-school-hols-20&utm_medium=esignature&utm_source=email&utm_content=><https://www.melbournelightscape.com.au/?utm_campaign=lightscape2020&utm_medium=esignature&utm_source=rbgv><https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/whats-on/seasons-in-blak-box?utm_campaign=seasons-blak-box&utm_medium=esignature&utm_source=rbgv&utm_content=blakbox><https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/support/donate-now?utm_campaign=appeal-jun20&utm_medium=email&utm_source=rbgv&utm_content=esignature><https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/support/orchid-conservation?utm_campaign=christmas-appeal-2020&utm_medium=esignature&utm_source=email><https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/garden-gathering-vol.-1?utm_campaign=garden-gathering-1&utm_medium=esignature&utm_source=email><https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/melbourne-gardens/garden-gathering-vol-2/><https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/support-us/175-years/?utm_campaign=Ad%201%20-%20awareness&utm_medium=email&utm_source=esig&utm_content=><https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/support-us/our-donors/><hhttps://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/schoolholidays?utm_campaign=winter-sch-hols-19&utm_medium=email&utm_source=rbgv&utm_content=esignature>

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work and learn and pay our respects to their Elders past and present.

This email and any attachments may contain information that is personal, confidential, legally privileged and/or copyright. No part of it should be reproduced, adapted or communicated without the prior written consent of the sender and/or copyright owner. It is the responsibility of the recipient to check for and remove viruses. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender by return email, delete it from your system and destroy any copies. You are not authorised to use, communicate or rely on the information contained in this email. Please consider the environment before printing this email.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20211112/9159ab65/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: RBG-Victoria-Online(Email)_61b4056e-de16-4315-b067-c52b3b2e66db.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 52710 bytes
Desc: RBG-Victoria-Online(Email)_61b4056e-de16-4315-b067-c52b3b2e66db.jpg
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20211112/9159ab65/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: FaceBook(FB-Email)_87911c07-4e8c-45b8-bc61-2816d736bd6e.png
Type: image/png
Size: 270 bytes
Desc: FaceBook(FB-Email)_87911c07-4e8c-45b8-bc61-2816d736bd6e.png
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20211112/9159ab65/attachment.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Twitter(Twit-Email)_ba5f6c37-582a-4484-8808-a9a75ff76319.png
Type: image/png
Size: 403 bytes
Desc: Twitter(Twit-Email)_ba5f6c37-582a-4484-8808-a9a75ff76319.png
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20211112/9159ab65/attachment-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Instagram(Insta-Email)_19213193-109a-42db-bbd9-8088460bb1cb.png
Type: image/png
Size: 459 bytes
Desc: Instagram(Insta-Email)_19213193-109a-42db-bbd9-8088460bb1cb.png
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20211112/9159ab65/attachment-0002.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 2021_rbgv_eoyappeal_esignature_d1b98e8c-eab5-451a-b8a6-2180789d54a8.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 141959 bytes
Desc: 2021_rbgv_eoyappeal_esignature_d1b98e8c-eab5-451a-b8a6-2180789d54a8.jpg
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20211112/9159ab65/attachment-0001.jpg>