Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

1. Submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation for a workshop to discuss the needs of the project. The proposal was successful and the workshop was held in February, 2010. The report is listed under Outputs.

2. The workshop formed ten task forces to address the projects needs as identified by the workshop participants.

3. Improved knowledge of US herbaria and the number of specimens they house. In September, 2009, Dr. Barbara Thiers provided information from Index Herbariorum, the International Registry of Herbaria, to the USVH Steering Committee that showed there were 588 US herbaria housing, collectively, 72 million specimens (excluding the 120 herbaria that transferred to other institutions or closed since the first US herbarium was founded in 1771).Efforts by regional representatives revealed that there are at least 811 US herbaria and that the number of specimens housed is about 73.5 million. Several of the additional herbaria have since registered with Index Herbariorum; others prefer not to do so but are willing to share information with representatives of regional herbarium networks.

4. A booth promoting the project was maintained at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America. Several individuals made inquiries about the project and asked for the name of their regional representative.

5. A demonstration portal was developed to demonstrate the impact of integrating records from three regional consortia.

6. A poster summarizing the goals and activities of the project was presented at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Providence, Rhode Island, and, in modified versions at the annual meeting for discussion of Biodiversity Information Standards at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and the annual meeting of the Organization of Fish and Wildlife Information Managers (OFWIM) at Cadiz, Kentucky. The original poster was designed by Ben Legler, Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria.

" Outputs

Murrell, Z. and M.E. Barkworth. US Virtual Herbarium Workshop Report. Submitted to the National Science Foundation, April, 2010. Task Force 5 (Communications Infrastructure). A Web Site for Communication Concerning the US Virtual Herbarium Project. http://usvirtualherbarium.org. Task Force 10 (Organization Structure). Proposed organizational structure for the US Virtual Herbarium Project. Posted to http://usvirtualherbarium.org in July, 2010. Now in the process of revision. " Activities

1. Workshop on development of a US Virtual Herbarium, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Missouri Botanical Garden.

2. Creation of a project web site, http://usvirtualherbarium.org.

3. Development of a form requesting information from herbaria for use in assessing the current state of herbarium digitization in the US. The information was used to develop the current estimate of the number of herbaria in the US and their holdings. Few provided information on their progress in digitization.

4. Letter sent to leaders of workshops on a national collections initiative expressing supporting for the goal.

" Milestones

1. Establishment of a project web site. Goals for 2010-2011 1) Get a database for recording progress  and post results. The initial information will come from IH in 2009 but we shall update it., recording when, by calling around. That seems to be the only way to obtain the information needed. 2) To find about $15000 pa support. Most of this will be used to hire a part time person to obtain the information for the database and do other such mundane tasks. Some of it will be used to pay for a booth at the annual meeting of both the Botanical Society of America meeting and the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections. The projects annual meeting is held in conjunction with the BSA meeting. The other meeting is one that many collections people attend. 3) Make available at least three presentations/webinars on digitization and sharing collection information.