Managers of Australasian Herbarium Collections (MAHC) is a subcommittee of the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH). Its members provide advice and recommendations pertaining to the management of preserved botanical collections.
Chair: Frank Hemmings
Assistant Chair: Hannah McPherson
MAHC was formed in 2009 and currently has 18 member institutions representing both government funded and university-based herbaria. It includes representatives from both the largest (National Herbarium of Victoria – MEL) and smallest collections (Macquarie University – MQU) in the region. The group meets in person annually, and holds regular virtual meetings throughout the year.
MAHC has a healthy forward planning outlook for herbaria. It develops, promotes and implements collections management policy, recommendations, guidelines, and best practice for herbarium collections management. MAHC has developed a toolkit of resources that are freely available and strives for a unified world-class best practice in herbarium curation for the region. Tools include templates, biosecurity documents, disaster mitigation, and Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing implementation for Australia and New Zealand. MAHC supports and ensures the success of new international initiatives and projects, such as the Global Plants Initiative imaging all Type specimens housed in Australasia. MAHC collaborates with CHAH and the data subcommittee, HISCOM (Herbarium Information Systems Committee), for continued improvements in sharing digital data and specimen images via the Australasian Virtual Herbarium (AVH), Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and New Zealand National Herbarium Network services. CHAH and MAHC have a representative position, held by a MAHC member, with the international Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC).
