Taxonomic Resources and Expertise Directory

[Jim Beach]

The Taxonomic Resources and Expertise Directory (TRED) has been developed
by the (U.S.) Association of Systematics Collections in collaboration with
the Biological Resources Division, U.S. Geological Survey, and several
other federal agencies under the leadership of Interagency Taxonomic
Information System.  TRED provides a continuously accessible (via the
World Wide Web/Internet) database on taxonomists/systematists with
expertise on specific taxonomic groups, habitats and geographic regions in
North America. The TRED database can be accessed and queried over the WWW
at http://www.nbii.gov/tred.  The (U.S.) Association of Systematics
Collections (ASC) has been collecting the initial information over the WWW
and via manual registration forms, conducting initial quality control on
the data provided, and entering the data into the local database.  Monthly
updates are then uploaded to the U.S.G.S.  Center for Biological
Informatics in Denver, where the database is managed and "served" over the
WWW.

Users can consult the database to find experts who can identify species,
perform taxonomic and biodiversity research, and provide consultation.
One can specify interest in taxonomic groups (at several levels),
geographic regions, or habitat types.  Although the focus of the database
is North America and surrounding waters, some international-level
expertise is also cited.

A companion database, the Survey of Resource Systematics Collections
(SRSC), focusing on museum species and databases, will also be available
on the web shortly.  For updates, please visit the ASC website at
www.ascoll.org or the TRED site.

For more information contact ASC at: 202-835-9050 or
asc at ascoll.org.