The workshop “ZooMu2: Further Linking and Leveraging Living Collections in Zoos with Traditional Natural History Collections” was held April 12-14, 2022 in a virtual format and led by Steven Whitfield (Zoo Miami) and the ZooMu co-organizers. The workshop was designed as a continuation of the efforts started by the ZooMu group in the 2021 workshop, Linking and Leveraging Biological Collections: Zoos and Natural History Museums. The initial workshop was designed to explore the similarities between zoos and museums as collection-based zoological institutions and the opportunities for the two types of institutions to work together more closely. Through a series of presentations during the three-day workshop in 2021, researchers from zoos, museums, and academic institutions gathered to discuss benefits of zoo-museum collaborations, challenges within each type of institution, and potential ways that zoos and museums can work together to increase the capacity of both. The workshop was well-received and participants pointed to the need for further discussion on enhancing zoo-museum collaborations.
ZooMu2 built on the momentum of the previous workshop and looked to distill the main areas within zoo-museum collaborations that should be tackled. Thise workshop was mostly in discussion format and focused on addressing four major areas: Higher educational pipelines, Conservation/Research at Zoo; Specimen transfer; Linking animals under the Extended Specimen Concept; and Databases. The main area groups focused on generating an overall vision, addressing roadblocks, types of resources (human, infrastructure, grants, workshops) needed to address these roadblocks, and establishing one, three, and five year goals. The overall consensus was that sharing data between zoos and museums is needed to provide us all with a better understanding of biodiversity. Two action items prioritized by the group included: (1) continuing outreach efforts to highlight the benefits of zoo-museum collaborationsintroduce zoo/data via workshops, webinars, conference and regional meeting presentations, etc., and (2) working to make zoo information (inventories) discoverable to connect zoo data with the larger community and thereby increase the scientific value of zoo collections.
Visit the workshop's wiki page for additional information: https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.php/ZooMu2:_Further_Linking_and_Lever...
