In April, the Biodiversity Collections Network (BCoN) conducted a survey of the natural history collections/museum community to understand how COVID-19 related economic disruptions are affecting the work of professionals associated with such collections. We shared the results with the scientific community, including federal program managers and policymakers, in May 2020.
This second survey follows up on and uses some questions from a recent American Alliance of Museums request for information. This survey focuses on collections institutions rather than individual staff, with the goal of determining the impact of COVID-19 related economic disruptions on research and management of collections. Our goal with this survey is to collect responses from as many institutions as possible; thus, one response per institution is optimal. If it is not possible to coordinate this, we would rather have multiple responses from an institution that we can combine, rather than no responses from an institution.
Institutions are invited to share information about their operating status – plans to re-open, operational status and limitations, closures, staff furloughs and Reductions in Force, program closures or terminations, and other disruptions to institutional operations. We invite information from all types of natural history collection holding institutions, which includes natural history museums, natural science collections, arboreta and herbaria, or other facilities with natural science collections.
We will share a summary of the results through a variety of venues, as we did with the previous survey. No information that identifies individual institutions by name is requested.