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Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:30:59 -0400
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From: Clifford Lynch <cliff@cni.org>
Subject: Surveys of US Scientific Collections
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Over the past few years the US Government has carried out several 
surveys of scientific collections and produced two very interesting 
reports that give a sense of the extent and diversity, as well as the 
scientific importance, of these resources. The first report is a 
survey of Federal Scientific Collections and can be found in the 2008 
Archives of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/nstc/docsreports/archives) 
at:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/galleries/NSTC%20Reports/Revision_1-22_09_CL.pdf

The second report, which is based on an NSF survey, looks at 
collections that receive Federal Funding; about two thirds of those 
described in the report are affiliated with higher education 
collections. This report can be found at

http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09044/nsf09044.pdf

Note that this NSF report is a short summary, and at the end it gives 
a URL to much more extensive data gathered from the survey.

These reports are important not just as baseline data about these 
collections, but because they lay part of the groundwork for a flurry 
of discussion and activity that is now taking place about capturing 
digitial representations various parts of these collections, and 
linking them together into national and international resources. I'll 
be sharing out pointers to some of these developments in coming 
months, and I also hope that we'll be able to highlight some of them 
at upcoming CNI meetings.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI