The Scientific Working Group
for Forensic Anthropology
(SWGANTH)
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Announcements, News and Events


Advisory Members Wanted!

While many of the initial SWGANTH documents have been published, many are still in draft form or are drafts-in-progress.  Anyone interested in working on these draft documents is encouraged to request to serve as an Advisory Member on these committees.  Moreover, as the SWGANTH completes its initial charge of identifying Best Practices for our discipline, we would like to expand our charter to include the development of minimum standards (see Home page).  It is thus anticipated that some committees may eventually need to be repopulated.  If you wish to serve on any of these committees, please email vice-chair@swganth.org.

Translation of Guidelines

Los documentos ya están disponibles en español.

Many of the published and draft guidelines are now available in Spanish. Elsa Jaramillo Schloss, an interpreter for the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP) - Colombia (Bogotá) provided the translations. Thank you, Elsa!  SWGANTH may also be working with the International Committee of the Red Cross to translate final documents into Russian, French and Arabic.

Conferences, Training and Professional Development


The SOFA Forensic Anthropology Bibliography
 

The Society of Forensic Anthropologists (SOFA) has created a bibliography that is an attempt at a comprehensive listing of books, journal articles and other publications related to the theory and practice of forensic anthropology and allied subjects. Topics covered include but are not limited to the biological profile, human identification, anthropometrics, statistics, DNA recovery, population biology, mass disaster response and the history of forensic anthropology. Keywords were imported from the original sources along with field data such as Title, Author, Pub Name, Pub Date, etc.  Each reference is also a hyperlink to the original website from which the entry was generated. As of April 25, 2011, there are approximately 3500 references in the bibliography.  

Several of the primary sources that were searched are listed below.  A few duplicates, import errors and some irrelevant articles have slipped in from the mass importing process which are being fixed as time allows. Early versions of the bibliography were organized by interns with the NYC Office of Chief Medical Examiner and the National Museum of Health and Medicine.  Please send any additions or errors to Brian Spatola (Brian.Spatola@us.army.mil). 

Primary Sources for imports:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
http://www.jstor.org/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
http://www.amazon.com/

Instructions for using the SOFA Forensic Anthropology Bibliography:
1. Become a member of Zotero at:
www.zotero.org
2. Download the helper application which works only with the Firefox browser: www.zotero.org/download/zotero-2.0.3.xpi
3. Search the bibliography at the following link:
www.zotero.org/groups/society_of_forenisc_anthropologists_sofa_-_forensic_anthropology_bibliography

Scientific Working Groups

Adams DE, Lothridge KL.  Scientific Working Groups.  Forensic Science Communications 2000;2(3).          www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/fsc/backissu/july2000/swgroups.htm

FBI Laboratory SWG overview

SWGDAM - DNA Analysis Methods
SWGDE - Digital Evidence 
SWGDOC - Questioned Documents
SWGDOG - Dog and Orthogonal Detector Guidelines 

SWGDRUG - Analysis of Siezed Drugs 
SWGDVI - Disaster Victim Identification
SWGFEX - Fire and Explosions
SWGFAST - Latent Fingerprints 
SWGGUN - Firearms and Toolmarks 
SWGIT - Imaging Technologies
SWGMAT - Materials Analysis
SWGMDI - Medicolegal Death Investigation
SWGSTAIN - Bloodstain Pattern Analysis 
SWGTOX - Toxicology
SWGTREAD - Shoeprint and Tire Tread Evidence
FISWG - Facial Identification

Related Links

American Academy of Forensic Sciences                                                      
www.aafs.org

International Association for Identification                                                      
www.theiai.org


American Board of Forensic Anthropology                                                         
www.theabfa.org

NamUs - National Missing and Unidentified Persons System
www.namus.gov

American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board - International  
http://www.ascld-lab.org/international/indexinternational.html

NAS Report on Strengthening Forensic Sciences in the United States:  A Path Forward      http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf

Draft Criminal Justice and Forensic Science Reform Act                             http://aafs.org/sites/default/files/pdf/DraftCriminalJusticeAndFSReformAct12-22-10.pdf

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