This Technical Committee was formed in recognition of the vital role that museums and collections play in identifying, cataloging, vouchering and documenting biological diversity, for their importance as resources to researchers, and for their function in public information and education.
Despite these vital functions, museums and collections
are constantly under threat from limitations of personnel, facilities
and funding. The Technical Committee has these aims:
1. Determine the significant biological specimen collections in PA, the
institutions and support staff that maintain them, thereby emphasizing and
the major taxa they contain.
2. Seek representation from the larger of these collections, as well as
representation of major groups of organisms, to form the body of the technical
committee. The Committee should contain a representative
of the 4-5 larger institutional collections and with minimal redundancy
also represent persons directly involved with collections of plants, mammals,
invertebrates, fungi, etc.
3. Produce a web-accessible inventory of the leading collections in PA,
their supervisory staff and existing policies, a summary of their PA holdings in
terms of specimens and taxa, and a consensus statement on the value and
acceptable uses for such resources (systematics, specimen-based documentation,
historical data storage, vouchering, etc.). As a brief supplement,
this inventory will include non-PA collections with significant holdings
of PA organisms.
4. Develop a list of urgent issues facing collections in PA, suitable for
communication to PABS Steering Committee, with intent for circulation by
PABS officers to all appropriate institutions, foundations, and agencies
in order to increase awareness of both services and needs of collection-based
resources for sustaining biodiversity in the state, now and in the future. Urgent
issues include, but are not limited to, the following:
A. Develop guidelines and specific recommendations for use
of collection resources
for documenting research and biotic inventory of PA organisms, including
explicit statement of costs intended for inclusion in project grant or
contract proposals at all levels.
B. Discuss data-related issues confronting biological collections,
including data dissemination, data sharing, data security, information ownership, data
accountability, among others.
C. Identify urgent and immediate needs confronting specimen-based
documentation in PA, including threats to collection integrity, potentially orphaned
collections, locating and disposing of collections already orphaned,
diversification of collection holdings including molecular samples,
and identifying future needs and threats related to maintaining active
and viable collections with adequate geographical and taxonomic coverage
in PA.
The area of Systematics presents some particular challenges; taxonomic
expertise is scarce and dwindling commodity. This Technical Committee aims
to highlight
some of these challenges, specifically ones related to tracking PA-related
expertise, research, and education
in systematic
biology,
and
in developing collection-based recommendations for compiling an authoritative list
of PA life forms that would begin to resolve questions such as those
raised in the recent Pennsylvania Biodiversity Partnership Snapshot volume. The
actual research and compiling are for others to do, as PABS is an advisory
body, but the Committee aims to take a stance on such issues.