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Among biocollections, mollusks are a particularly powerful resource for a wide range of studies, including biogeography, conservation, ecology, environmental monitoring, evolutionary biology, and systematics. U.S. mollusk collections are housed in stand-alone natural history museums, at universities, and in a variety of governmental and non-governmental institutions. Differing in their histories, specializations, and uses, they share common needs for long-term development, and collectively contribute to biodiversity knowledge at regional, national, and global scales. Commitment by dedicated staff, collectors, and volunteers, institutional investments, philanthropy, and governmental funding have built and maintained these collections and their support infrastructure. Efforts by the North American malacological collection community since the early 1970s led to coordination in database design but left the data isolated in individual institutions. Collection digitization developed through a combination of individual/institutional initiatives and federally supported projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Advances in digital technology enabled the shift toward nationally and globally unified collections. Networking and collaboration were greatly accelerated by NSF’s Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) program, which created a central coordinating organization (iDigBio) and funded Thematic Collections Network (TCN) projects. One such TCN was developed to mobilize nearly 90% of the known U.S. museum-collections-based data of the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts (Mobilizing Millions of Marine Mollusks of the Eastern Seaboard—ESB). The project, involving 16 museum collections (plus the Smithsonian Institution as federal partner), combines data from approximately 4.5 million specimens collected from the ESB region and makes them available to the TCN portal InvertEBase and other aggregators such as iDigBio and GBIF. In addition to fostering community and expanding the corpus of available digitized mollusk records through new data entry and georeferencing (GEOLocate, CoGe) and standardizing taxonomy, the project drove key innovations for the invertebrate collections community. For instance, it worked with the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) group to create a new Darwin Core standard term, “Vitality”, expanded GEOLocate to support complex geospatial types, integrated global elevation and bathymetric datasets directly into georeferencing workflow, and developed various education and outreach public outreach products. Synthesizing from the 15 following articles with individual histories of ESB-participating mollusk collections, several topics are discussed—such as what defines a “good” mollusk collection in the digital age and the importance of federal support for this national resource. 

Surveys of snails from New Guinea and surrounding islands provide new distributional and ecological data for Truncatellidae from the Papuan Region. We present an annotated checklist of all Papuan Truncatellidae and the first identification key for the terrestrial genus Taheitia H. and A. Adams, 1863. Unlike widespread marine and estuarine species of Truncatella, the Papuan Taheitia usually have single island ranges and are restricted to forested limestone habitats. New anatomical data suggests that many earlier reports of Taheitia with multi-island distributions appear to be the result of confusion between superficially similar species. Eight new Taheitia species are described: T. biaka sp. nov. from Biak, T. bifurca sp. nov. from Manus,T. gebeensis sp. nov. from Gebe, T. gigantea sp. nov. from Waigeo, T. jodiae sp. nov. from New Britain, T. longpela sp. nov. from New Britain, T. malagan sp. nov. from New Ireland, and T. telnovi sp. nov. from Misool. 

the Endodontidae are land snails endemic to Pacific islands, and the type genus Endodonta and its 11 species are endemic to the Hawaiian Archipelago. most members of the family, because of their ground dwelling habits, are vulnerable to introduced predators and most of the species in Hawaii are already extinct. Fossil specimens have been used to describe extinct species, but no living Endodonta species have been described in more than 100 years. Over the last 15 years, the most comprehensive search for land snails in Hawaii has been carried out, with more than 1000 sites surveyed to date. the only known living Endodonta species is from the island of Nihoa, discovered in 1923, but remaining undescribed until now. Here we finally give what we think is the last Endodonta species a name and describe it using an integrative taxonomic approach. In describing this last Endodonta species, our hope is to inspire increased awareness and appreciation that facilitates and motivates conservation for this species and all the other undiscovered and unnamed species threatened with extinction. unless protection of this species is implemented, it may be extinct within the next decade and we will lose the last of a lineage that existed for millions of years, and the stories it could tell. 

the Endodontidae are land snails endemic to Pacific islands, and the type genus Endodonta and its 11 species are endemic to the Hawaiian Archipelago. most members of the family, because of their ground dwelling habits, are vulnerable to introduced predators and most of the species in Hawaii are already extinct. Fossil specimens have been used to describe extinct species, but no living Endodonta species have been described in more than 100 years. Over the last 15 years, the most comprehensive search for land snails in Hawaii has been carried out, with more than 1000 sites surveyed to date. the only known living Endodonta species is from the island of Nihoa, discovered in 1923, but remaining undescribed until now. Here we finally give what we think is the last Endodonta species a name and describe it using an integrative taxonomic approach. In describing this last Endodonta species, our hope is to inspire increased awareness and appreciation that facilitates and motivates conservation for this species and all the other undiscovered and unnamed species threatened with extinction. unless protection of this species is implemented, it may be extinct within the next decade and we will lose the last of a lineage that existed for millions of years, and the stories it could tell. 

the Endodontidae are land snails endemic to Pacific islands, and the type genus Endodonta and its 11 species are endemic to the Hawaiian Archipelago. most members of the family, because of their ground dwelling habits, are vulnerable to introduced predators and most of the species in Hawaii are already extinct. Fossil specimens have been used to describe extinct species, but no living Endodonta species have been described in more than 100 years. Over the last 15 years, the most comprehensive search for land snails in Hawaii has been carried out, with more than 1000 sites surveyed to date. the only known living Endodonta species is from the island of Nihoa, discovered in 1923, but remaining undescribed until now. Here we finally give what we think is the last Endodonta species a name and describe it using an integrative taxonomic approach. In describing this last Endodonta species, our hope is to inspire increased awareness and appreciation that facilitates and motivates conservation for this species and all the other undiscovered and unnamed species threatened with extinction. unless protection of this species is implemented, it may be extinct within the next decade and we will lose the last of a lineage that existed for millions of years, and the stories it could tell.