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What is the Biological Collections Action Center?

Action Center for

Biological Collections

NASEM 2020

BCON 2019

Central Organizing Unit

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What is the Biological Collections Action Center?

Although the biological collections community is motivated and active, many of the community’s endeavors to communicate the role of collections and position them and their associated metadata as critical infrastructure for addressing societal problems are disconnected and uncoordinated. A collaborative action center would facilitate and connect all relevant and interested parties, including living and natural history collections leadership, curators, and managers, university administrators, public and private funders, and the scientific communities that use collections, among other entities whose perspectives and needs are important to the future vitality of biological collections. Currently, there are no shared mechanisms, meeting spaces, or virtual platforms that bring together all of these relevant and interested parties.

NASEM 2020

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What is the Biological Collections Action Center?

Recommendation 8-1: The National Science Foundation, in collaboration with other institutions that provide funding and other types of support for biological 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 communities of practice for research, education, workforce training, evaluation, and business model development, among other community-wide needs.

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NASEM 2020

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What is the Biological Collections Action Center?

Preamble:

  • Collections community is motivated and active
  • But many community endeavors are disconnected and uncoordinated
  • Collaborative action center
  • Facilitate and connect stakeholders
  • No shared mechanisms, meeting spaces, or virtual platforms

NASEM 2020

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What is the Biological Collections Action Center?

Recommendation 8-1:

  • National Science Foundation, in collaboration with other institutions that provide funding and other types of support for biological collections
  • Permanent national Action Center
  • To coordinate action, knowledge, resources, data-sharing
  • Physical space
  • Cyberinfrastructure
  • Implement collaborative strategic efforts
  • Nurture communities of practice

NASEM 2020

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Some Common Themes

  • Coordinator
  • Facilitator
  • Advocacy & Support
  • Best Practices
  • Clearinghouse
  • Workforce Development
  • Extended Specimen

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Living Collections

  • Research & model organisms
  • Grown & maintained in
    • genetic stock centers
    • germplasm repositories
    • living biodiversity collections

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USDA Collections

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Roles:

  1. Agricultural research: crop and livestock breeding; pest and pathogen studies
  2. Pest and pathogen Identifications at ports
  3. Natural history studies
  4. Bioeconomy/biotechnology
  5. Genomics

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Need to rethink how we build collections

—global strategy

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Holistic Field Collections Lead to Extended Specimens

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Critical Museum Infrastructure

Long-term Tissue Archives

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Support cutting-edge science

Connect genomes and phenotypes via collections

Action center could:

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  • Provide a forum for showcasing leading examples of cutting-edge collections-based science

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  • Help recruit the best, most diverse talent to the museum research community

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  • Promote best practices for linking genomic and voucher data

Courtesy Julia Clarke, U. Texas, Austin

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Unanticipated Benefits -

Transformational Discoveries:

the PCR Story

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  • From the discovery of a heat loving microbe and its heat-tolerant enzymes
  • To the development of the polymerase chain reaction

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Strategic Planning & Envisioning

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Facilitation & Coordination

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CORE FUNCTIONS

Consultation & Guidance

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Communication & Outreach*

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Developing

Communities of Practice,

Breaking Silos

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Biological Collections Action Center

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Hub for collaboration and coordination. Clearinghouse for a number of important national initiatives. Aligning of individual projects and initiatives.

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  • Digitization - iDigBio + - provide continuous funding and home for digitization initiative – ADBC/TCN/PEN, specimen data portal, training, workshops
  • Policy, visioning and leadership - BCoN + and others
  • Data integration/attribution - realize the dream of the Digital Extended Specimen through:
    • Community coordination, development and engagement
    • Necessary cyberinfrastructure support - digital repository, collections registry, metrics
  • Clearinghouse - best practices, standards, policy (Nagoya, ABS, permitting, etc.)
  • National Orphan collections discovery and clearinghouse - SMP
  • Personnel and workforce support - training, professional development, workshops
  • Community engagement - biological, zoo, living collections, research, societies and international communities
  • Synthesis/Data Center collaboration and coordination

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Action Center could catalyze collections’ role in societal needs

  • Climate change
  • Habitat conversion
  • Increased pollutants
  • Food security
  • Introduction of exotics
  • Loss of biotic diversity
  • Emerging pathogens

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  • Biocollections establish historic baselines

---- crucial to documenting change�

Generally, not built with these issues in mind.

Bud Fay-Univ of Alaska

Walruses--now declining

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Emerging Infectious Diseases The Bioeconomy

Safeguarding the Bioeconomy,

2020 National Academy of Sciences

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Additional Themes

  • Orphan collections
  • National needs
    • Connecting federal and non-federal collections
    • Collaboration among federal agencies
  • Global connections
  • Collections support and outward-facing uses
  • Permanent - structure?

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BCoN and NASEM Recommendations: Areas of Overlap

Five Conceptual Pillars of the ESN

(Thiers et al., 2021)

  1. Collection of new specimens/samples
  2. Continued digitization
  3. Data Integration
  4. Education and Workforce Training
  5. Infrastructure and sustainability

BCoN (2019):

Central Coordinating Unit

NASEM (2020):

Action Center for Biological Collections

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Discourse Platform: discourse.idigbio.org

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Previous Discussion

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Community questions from webinars

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Collaborative or existing efforts and models

  • Are folks here knowledgeable about SESYNC? While it's not an Action Center on the scale we are talking about, it might be a model to look at for "Spanning Boundaries"
  • What existing models for permanent national centers might this particular center emulate? GenBank? Others?
  • I wonder how iSamples infrastructure and the companion Sampling Nature Research Coordination Network might be part of this planning process too?
  • I wonder how much the Smithsonian National Museum can have the added charge of acting as the ‘Biological Collections Action Center’. Or should it be a complete and distinct center?
  • Currently, the US has a vibrant community of collection management systems and specialist collections groups. Are you planning to keep these productive groups and their knowledge intact, while also layering the beneficial "sauce" of a collection action center on top?
  • I'm curious how this "Action Center" would support / encourage the work of individuals. We're moving from "isolated knowledge management" to "shared knowledge management". Surely it is this innovation we don't want to lose when we talk about national infrastructures and liaisons with other large groups?

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Community questions from webinars

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International

  • In my experience, collaborative efforts, go beyond borders. How would you balance your US focused center with this borderless challenge we are trying to address?
  • Why not an ‘international center’? Something across multiple governments that would be more collaborative and less centralized?
  • The EU SYNTHESYS project may be a comparable model https://www.synthesys.info/

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Community questions from webinars

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Funding and legal issues

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  • Would a permanent national action center require an act of congress? Would that be likely to ever happen?
  • Do you envision this Action center being a federal institution, or created with federal dollars, but managed privately?
  • GenBank must have a very large bill for data storage & serving, and I imagine a Collections Center might also have one depending on its role.
  • Is there a role for the action center, centralized or distributed, in 'lobbying' for base level funding (non-grant based) so that collections, regardless of size, can more effectively engage in these broader science questions and value for society.
  • I'm interested in the legal framework needed to make an action center work. There are ownership issues and maybe even repatriation issues if collections were unjustly acquired from indigenous or other nations. Have you thought of a rights framework for the actions center?

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Community questions from webinars

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Workforce

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  • The natural history community has worked historically with limited budgets and underpaid curatorial staff, working for the “greater good”. How might a center such as this help move the needle on workforce development in our community, ensuring that museum careers in whatever capacity are available to all?
  • When it comes to capacity / workforce development, what would you envision might be done to professionalize collections management and work from the ground up to get more positions funded (not on soft money) at various institutions? Can the Action Center take on a role of providing "local" advocacy help regarding the need for these individuals.

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Community questions from webinars

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“Scope”

  • Are there economies of scale? - actions that could be taken by an action center that would not occur without an action center?
  • As a living collection Scientist, I still see a major silo separating living and non-living collections. I hope the action center can help to better integrate these two types of collections. Is the group being able to bring in more living collections into these conversations?
  • Could a Center take on a role in meeting global biodiversity contracts and agreements, for example by provisioning necessary data products and ensuring quality/interoperability? This may move the funding model beyond just the purview of NSF?
  • Could you speak more to a national orphans collections discovery and clearinghouse? Who would do the work of cataloging large tissue collections from small institutions and field research stations with tissues that need to be accessioned into a national collection?
  • Given that so much of our biodiversity occurrence records are now arising from observations would this be in scope of an action center?

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Community questions from webinars

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“Scope”

  • How do you imagine physical (preserved/living) collections co-exist with their digital counter parts? What are your thoughts on how an action center can help to mature the protocols needed to preserve our digital treasures?
  • One of the greatest barriers to growth for vertebrate collections is wildlife agencies restricting collecting and pushing for non-lethal sampling only. How do you envision the action center addressing this?
  • What are the panelists' thoughts about how such a center helps local collections advocate for themselves locally? We're asking collections for more work, for more data, etc. They need advocacy at their local levels if we want to get to what we're hoping for at the national / global level.
  • What is your view on "leading development of cyberinfrastructure"? Are you leaning towards centralizing funding skills, or decentralizing funding and skills to build a communal skill to maintain, and improve, cyberinfrastructure?

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Orphan collections

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Two types of orphan collections

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  • Organized natural history collections that are neglected/discarded due to funding or staff shortages or lack of insight.
  • Research collections that languish in labs due to retirement or other causes and never make it into NH collections. Loss of NSF funded materials.

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Need to find homes for these materials

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Several previous attempts to tackle this issue

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  1. American Alliance of Museums (AAM) - publicize availability of NHC’s for exchange or transfer - http://www.aam-us.org/museumresources/cec/index.cfm
  2. ICAL - http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/ICAL/

Jere Lipps (1996) - Berkeley - NSF-funded system developed for Invert Paleo collections to communicate about a collection threatened/orphaned. Later ported over to other disciplines (ento - Bishop; inverts - Field; botany). Code still exists

  • Discussions within SPNHC (2004) to take over these portals, harmonize them and make them available to the community

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Unfortunately none of these went anywhere…

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Daniel Gluesenkamp, Executive Director, California Institute for Biodiversity…

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Do you think SPNHC would be up for trying again? CIB could fund the effort – perhaps someone’s time to sort it out and manage discussions, plus $ for coding, plus some $ for hosting or whatever. Even $ for advertising in select publications and fora.

Dan

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Action Center could assist in the centralization of such a resource to effect a community solution to this problem by providing the advocacy tools and clearinghouse for such interactions.

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