From Plant Press, Vol. 23, No. 3, July 2020.
by C.L. Kelloff, M. Toner, and L. Palmer
The COVID-19 pandemic has made us rethink how we do business. Many of us are working at home and balancing family needs with work projects. Activities such as concerts, conferences, and all events where people congregate are cancelled or postponed. The joint meeting with the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) and International Committee for Museums and Collections of Natural History of the International Council of Museums (ICOM NATHIST) was scheduled to be held in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2020. Instead of cancelling, a group of committed SPNHC members including Liath Appleton, Andrew Bentley, Emily Braker, Mariana Di Giacomo, Phaedra Fang, Elspeth Haston, Shelley James, Talia Karim, Amanda Lawrence, Paul Mayer, Cindy Opitz, Rebecca Newberry, Deborah Paul, Christel Schollaardt, Barbara Thiers, Debra Trock, Dorit Wolenitz, and Breda Zimkus created a meeting that took place in the digital world. Special thanks to all.
SPNHC and ICOM NATHIST hosted the virtual meeting on 8-12 June 2020 using the Zoom video conferencing platform. The conference was free to members and offered online events to foster conversations across the joint worldwide communities, included a plenary session, symposia, presentations as well as 5-minute specimen spotlights. Total attendance was just under 2,000 participants. Business and committee meetings for the two societies were held via Zoom, allowing members to attend and participate from across the world. Zoom allows for participates to chat with one another during the conference and this allowed for lively real time discussions. With two time-blocks established for the sessions to ensure that the meeting was as globally inclusive as possible, it was deemed a success with the average number of attendees per session well over 200.
Video after the jump...
The SPNHC symposium, “Envisioning Collections Management for the Evolving Biodiversity Data Lifecycle,” originally scheduled for June 10, was postponed by the symposium organizers out of respect for colleagues who were participating in #strike4blacklives, #shutDownSTEM, #shutDownAcademia, and other associated events occurring on the same day. The symposium was rescheduled and held on June 23. The session included talks on the different aspects of the biodiversity data lifecycle (e.g., collection, digitization, mobilization, management, publication). Sylvia Orli (Smithsonian’s Department of Botany) gave a presentation on the effect of digitization (particularly during the Covid-19 restrictions) on the work practices of collection managers.
For those interested in the SPNHC and ICOM NATHIST meeting, the sessions have been recorded and can be watched via the SPNHC YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClqmXpv8eKDJnC6FsdYtajg.
2020 SPNHC/ICOM NATHIST online conference
Symposium: Envisioning Collections Management for the Evolving Biodiversity Data Lifecycle
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