Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability

Welcome to San Francisco!

Join us in the City by the Bay, May 23-28^th, 2011 for the 26^th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, hosted by the California Academy of Sciences (CAS).  We will be joined this year by our colleagues from the Natural Science Collections Alliance (NSCA) for the fourth joint meeting of these two societies.  We think that this will be an exciting and productive meeting for both groups and look forward to continuing our collaborations.

This is also the second time that CAS has hosted the annual meeting, but I think that you will notice a few changes!!

We are excited about showing all of you our new Platinum LEED certified “green” museum. 

Most of the meeting events will take place at the Hotel Kabuki in the heart of Japantown.  The Hotel Kabuki is one of a number of boutique hotels in San Francisco, offering a blend of a serene Japanese style setting with a western touch.

We are also building what we think we be an exciting program with activities during the plenary session being co-hosted by NSCA.  We will have a second edition of “Demo Camp” which proved to be quite successful last year.  Field trips will take us south to Monterey, north to Wine Country, east to the campus of the University of California Berkeley, and west to......well, we can’t go much further west, but we will be birding the Chain of Lakes on the west end of Golden Gate Park, and taking a cruise around the bay! You will also have an opportunity to explore our new building at an evening event we are calling “Wednesday Wild,” and during an afternoon of collections tours.

On behalf of the local organizing committee, I invite you to join us for what we hope will be a memorable meeting,

We will continue to update this web site as meeting plans progress.  Please check back regularly for new developments.