Presenters: Kasia Ahern, Kelsey Falquero, Alice Fornari, Molly Kamph, Kayla Kramer, Greg Polley, and Megan Viera​​

In July 2020, a working group of NMNH Collections Program Technicians proposed a collections initiative to highlight the forgotten, obscure, and too often erased histories of those who have contributed their time and energy in service to the museum, its mission, and ultimately its collections. The Collections Histories for Accountability and Transparency (CHAT) working group project aims to document donors, collectors, creators, and contributors to the NMNH collections through short biographies intended for incorporation into the museum’s collections database. Within this presentation, the CHAT group will outline the inspiration behind the project, current statistics of the NMNH collections’ contributors, examples of biographies, and plans for implementation at NMNH.