This year at the Botany 2024 conference (Grand Rapids, MI), the ASPT Curators Meeting will carry a theme of “Success Stories: Maintaining and Advancing Herbaria in the 21st Century”. In these times of institutional budget cuts and space limitations herbarium curators are faced with challenges in maintaining and advancing their collections. We would like you to share strategies that have led to overcoming and growing your herbaria even when it seemed institutional forces were not in your corner or challenging the necessity of maintaining the collections. We hope for an uplifting discussion around the presentations. The presentations can focus on strategies of communication with administrative bodies to promote the next generation of data that our herbaria can provide. Growing communication among herbarium curators and staff will better equip all to face growing challenges.

Call for informal presentations: We are requesting 10-20 minute informal presentations from herbarium curators or their representatives. Please provide a brief abstract with the primary theme to the Current Chair of the ASPT Systematics Collections Committee, Michael Moody, mlmoody@utep.edu. The ASPT Curators Meeting convenes on Monday Evening, June 17. It doesn’t matter the size of the herbarium collection you may represent; we just want to hear your stories as our membership is associated with a wide array of institutions. While the abstracts won’t be published in BSA Program, the speakers, titles, and themes will be circulated advertising the ASPT Curators Meeting. We look forward to hearing from you!

Thank You, ASPT Systematic Collections Committee