Criteria for membership

[patrick...@yale.edu]

At the June 2 meeting there was discussion about what the criteria
would be for membership. Before the invitations are sent to the join
the group, we should establish some interim criteria. These will
provide a baseline for future membership discussions among the larger
group and will help avoid any initial confusion about membership.

Here is an example of what CCH has adopted:

"Participation in the Consortium of California Herbaria as a data
provider is open to all herbaria in California that meet the following
minimum requirements for data inclusion:

-Electronically available collection data is recorded from specimens
of California vascular plants.

-Specimens are available for consultation, preferably via loan.

-Personnel are available at the home institution to address possible
errors and make corrections as necessary."

To start the discussion, I'm going to propose some criteria.

1) Must be an institution. At the June 2 meeting everyone seemed to
agree that this was important. How do we define institution?

The National Science Collections Alliance (NSCA) has a adopted some
criteria that we could use as a model:

Institutional membership in the Alliance shall be open to any bona
fide non-profit institution which maintains scientific collections
(e.g., botanic garden, natural history museum, or university), and
which provides satisfactory evidence that its collections are
permanently housed, maintained to accepted professional standards,
managed by a permanent staff or trained scientific personnel, used in
support of research and in publication, and accessible for scholarly
study.

2) Geographic scope, physically located in one of these provinces/
states and has specimens collected in one of these provinces/states:

Canada: New Brunswick, Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince
Edward Is., Ontario, Quebec

USA: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New
York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont

This would not preclude us from getting data from institutions outside
of the network.

3) Organismal scope: taxa traditionally under the purview of herbaria,
i.e., Fungi, Algae, Lichens, Tracheophytes. We could be ambiguous
about this and let the term "herbarium" in the broad sense define the
scope.

4) Should there be a minimum size limit? Criterion number one might
lessen the need for this.

One could imagine putting all of the above together to yield something
like:

"The Consortium of Northeastern Herbaria is an organization comprised
of herbaria in northeastern North America, a region encompassing the
the provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia,
Prince Edward Is., Ontario, and Quebec in Canada and the states of
Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New
York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont in the United States.

Membership is open to herbaria whose collections are regional in
scope, permanently housed in the region, maintained to accepted
curatorial standards, managed by trained personnel, and are accessible
for consultation."

Does anyone have any thoughts, additions, etc.?

Also, we have been discussing the use of Index Herbariorum as a
starting point for a list of invitees. Is it safe to assume that the
institutions on the IH list meet the above criteria?

[AFF]

Hi Patrick,

Perhaps we could follow the California consortium wordings? I am a
little troubled when if we say" Membership is open to herbaria whose

collections are regional in scope"

Our institution (and as you know, several others) have collections and
emphasis in other areas of the world as well.

Best,

Alina.

[AFF]

Dear all,

I am a little confused. Since I understand it was decided that we will
have institutions and not people as members (then I understand it
will have to be ONE person per institution). And also, I understood
that the institutions were going to be the herbaria listed in the IH;
then do we really need to have in the website an option for requests
for joining the group?

From the logic above, we will need to send the invitations only to
those people listed on the IH? And in fact, then maybe we should send
only ONE invitation per institution?

I think it will be great if we have this matter clarified before we
send the invitation.

Many thanks and best,

Alina.

On Jun 27, 4:22 pm, patrick.swee...@yale.edu wrote: