Welcome to new SHNH President Ms Gina Douglas Hon FLS

SHNH  Society for the History of Natural History welcomes our new President Ms Gina Douglas Hon FLS (Honoris causa).

Gina is additionally President of The Ray Society (2019-) (https://www.raysociety.org.uk/), Honorary Archivist of the Linnean Society of London (www.linnean.org), and Editor of The Linnean (Newsletter & Proceedings of the Linnean Society). Gina is also an Honorary Member of SHNH – Society for the History of Natural History (www.shnh.org.uk), the Svenska Linnésallskapet (Swedish Linnaeus Society) (http://www.linnaeus.se/) and EBHL – the European Botanical and Horticultural Libraries Group, of which she is a founder member (https://ebhl.org/). Gina has a long association with SHNH, serving as an Officer and as Meetings Secretary from 1989-1993 and again from 2000-2018 and has additionally served on Council 1988-1989 and 2019-2021.

As Librarian and Archivist of the Linnean Society of London (1982-2007) and acting Executive Secretary (2008), Gina has always willingly shared her wealth of knowledge of natural history and the Linnean Society Collections with researchers and colleagues from around the world. She is a consummate networker, understanding the importance of social and professional networking to share knowledge and experience. Not only was Gina a founder member of EBHL, but also led on the initial development of the Linnaeus Link Project, an international collaboration between libraries with significant holdings of Linnaean material. Managed by the Linnean Society, this initiative now has 22 international members (http://www.linnaeuslink.org/). Gina was also instrumental in the initial grant development and implementation of the conservation and digitisation of the Linnaean Collections (the Linnaean correspondence and specimen collections) (https://www.linnean.org/research-collections), making this important resource globally available, both for taxonomists and also for social historians learning about the biological networks of the time.  Gina is also a skilled communicator, and has shared her love for natural history and the wide holdings of the library and collections of the Linnean Society on media programmes worldwide. She has chaired international meetings, and contributed numerous outputs through talks, publications and journals. In 2008 Gina was awarded a Linnean Society Tercentenary Medal for communication.