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Pages 1-16

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From page 1...
... has endeavored to provide broad financial support through its Division of Biological Infrastructure within the Directorate for Biological Sciences. However, NSF welcomes guidance on a wide range of questions regarding long-term sustainability, including questions about operational structures, policies, and social cultures that could provide momentum to maintain and grow biological collections.
From page 2...
... Non-living specimens, which include organisms preserved by scientists and naturally preserved remains, such as fossils, are commonly re ferred to as natural history collections. Living specimens include research and model organisms that are grown and maintained in genetic stock centers, germ plasm repositories, or living biodiversity collections.
From page 3...
... living organisms, including research and model organisms.1 In that regard, this report is the first of its kind. The committee acknowledges that living collections and natural history collections have distinct purposes and needs, but the committee also found that there are many opportunities for these communities to learn from one another and collaborate.
From page 4...
... , which vastly expanded the genetic resources available in living collections and advanced the applications of biotechnology in medicine, agriculture, and conservation, was also, in part, the result of research on materials sourced from living microbe collections. Biological collections also support much of the applied research that drives innovation and provides crucial knowledge about such pressing societal challenges as the effects of global change, biodiversity loss, sustainable food production, ecosystem conservation, and improving human health and security.
From page 5...
... For example, the Biodiversity Literacy in Undergraduate Education3 project uses data derived from natural history specimens to integrate data literacy teaching into undergraduate biology curricula. Finally, biological collections empower people from all walks of life to connect to and learn about nature, thus building wonder and providing a source of inspiration and appreciation for the natural world.
From page 6...
... Building and Maintaining a Robust Infrastructure Infrastructure includes not only the physical space and equipment used to house and maintain the specimens in a collection but also their accompanying data and the procedures governing their care. It includes the technologies to produce digital data and the cyberinfrastructure to store, analyze, and aggregate data with those of other collections through online portals.
From page 7...
... Recommendation 4-3: Professional societies, associations, and coordina tion networks should collaborate and combine efforts aimed at addressing community-level infrastructure needs of the nation's biological collections, including: • develop a platform to pool and share resources such as strategic plans, best practices, and training opportunities so that these can serve as resources for the broader biological collections community; • develop and implement strategies to adopt quality control programs to improve uniformity among living stock collections and ensure the
From page 8...
... Director ate for Biological Sciences should continue to provide funding support for biological collections infrastructure and expand endeavors to coordinate support within and beyond the Directorate. Specifically, NSF should: • support new and improved infrastructure to accommodate the pressing needs created by continued collections growth; • require a specimen management plan for all research proposals that includes collecting or generating specimens that describes how the specimens and associated data will be accessioned into and perma nently maintained in an established biological collection; and • facilitate the creation and support of an independent consortium to develop collaborative platforms and mechanisms to pool and share resources for strategic planning, preventive maintenance, quality control and assurance, collections growth, establishing a national collections registry, and other community-level assets.
From page 9...
... A unified cyberinfrastructure that connects all types of biological collections, such as living and natural history collections, could accelerate research and provide innovative educational opportunities. Moreover, a permanent national cyberinfrastructure that supports the needs noted above in terms of expanded digitization of dark data, improvement in data quality, and increased accessibility to digital data would certainly spur data use.
From page 11...
... Stanley, Florida Museum of Natural History; field notes picture by Mary Lewandowski; ecto and endo parasites image; and the georeferences map from the U.S. Geological Survey.
From page 12...
... A deeper understanding of the scope and needs of the existing collections workforce, identifying critical skillsets shared among the nation's biological collections, and building a sufficient workforce pipeline require collaborative, coordinated action. The path forward will require collaboration among the nation's biological collections as well as partnerships with other professional communities, incentivized with the support of NSF.
From page 13...
... Provide guidance on alternative, innovative staffing strategies, including mechanisms to formalize student or vol unteer involvement in collections management, that can help address staffing shortages, meet critical skillset needs, and serve as a mechanism to deepen collections knowledge among a broader range of people. Recommendation 6-2: As part of its programmatic endeavors to promote a robust biological infrastructure, the National Science Foundation Director ate for Biological Sciences should support initiatives that focus explicitly on systemic, systematic, and thoughtful development of the biological col lections workforce pipeline.
From page 14...
... Recommendation 7-2: Professional societies should develop extensive net worked training platforms for sharing best practices for financial manage ment and planning and business models for collections of all sizes and types. This could be an ongoing activity centered at a national biological collections center and should include both natural history and living col lections together.
From page 15...
... Recommendation 8-1: The National Science Foundation, in collaboration with other institutions that provide funding and other types of support for biologi cal collections, should help establish a permanent national Action Center for Biological Collections to coordinate action and knowledge, resources, and data sharing among the nation's biological collections as they strive to meet the complex and often unpredictable needs of science and society. Such an action center should include a physical space and cyberinfrastructure to develop and implement collaborative strategic efforts and further build and nurture commu nities of practice for research, education, workforce training, evaluation, and business model development, among other community-wide needs.


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