announcement of e-conferences on prioritisation

[Meredith Lane]

*Announcement of e-conferences on the setting of priorities for GBIF *

*DIGIT and ECAT Seed Money*

As part of the process of formulating the 2005-2006 requests for
proposals for the GBIF seed money competitions, a discussion of
priorities will be carried out through e-conferences.

GBIF welcomes your insights about what taxonomic groups or regional
floras/faunas should be priorities for the GBIF seed money programmes.

Two simultaneous e-conferences will take place from 25 May through 1
June, 2005. The e-conferences will be concerned with priority-setting
for the GBIF seed money awards that will be made by the Digitisation of
Natural History Collections (DIGIT) and the Electronic Catalogue of Name
of Known Organisms (ECAT) Work Programmes.

Participation in the e-conferences is open to all interested parties,
who need to register to participate in one or both of the e-conferences.
Register for the ECAT e-conference by clicking here
<http://www.gbif.org/prog/ecat/conference/index_html> and for the DIGIT
e-conference, click here
<http://www.gbif.org/prog/digit/conference/index_html>.  Background and
instructions documents can be accessed through www.gbif.org
<http://www.gbif.org/>.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) was created in March
2001 as an open, independent international organization dedicated to
making the world's biodiversity data freely and universally available
via the internet. Importantly, GBIF is open to participation by all
countries, economic entities and organizations that can benefit by the
open sharing of biodiversity information on a global scale. Two of
GBIF's work programmes, DIGIT and ECAT, concentrate on facilitating the
expansion of biodiversity knowledge by

    * working with natural history collections and observational data
      communities to promote the digitization and dynamic accessibility
      of observational and specimen data (DIGIT), as well as
    * working with organisations like the Catalogue of Life partnership,
      uBio, nomenclators such as IPNI and BIOSIS, and developers of
      regional checklists to incorporate data on nomenclature and
      taxonomy into a comprehensive electronic catalogue of the Earth's
      biota (ECAT).

To date, GBIF has provided nearly USD 3 million in seed-money awards.
These funds have generally targeted projects that could be rapidly
implemented with a high probability of success. As a result, the data
available through the GBIF data portal (www.gbif.net
<http://www.gbif.net/>) are spotty. However, it is important that we now
develop a defined set of priorities for the seed money grants, using
criteria for which there is a clear rationale.

As a first step in working with the broader communities of taxonomists,
curators and observational data providers to develop a unified and
comprehensive plan for prioritizing digitization and electronic
cataloguing efforts, GBIF is initiating two e-conferences to discuss the
targeting of the 2005-2006 GBIF seed money awards. The goal is to select
priorities that will result in quality data sets that are rich enough
and have enough geographic coverage to demonstrate to the scientific
community, to politicians and to funding agencies the value of global
efforts to digitize occurrence data and electronically catalogue names.

GBIF invites your insights about what taxonomic groups or regional
floras/faunas should be priorities for the GBIF seed money programmes.
Please remember to register for one or both of the e-conferences, so
that you can participate in the discussion(s).

--
-- /Meredith A. Lane, PhD  *mlane at gbif.org <mailto:mlane at gbif.org>*
Public & Scientific Liaison
Global Biodiversity Information Facility
GBIF Secretariat   / tel +45 3532 1470
dl: +45 3532 1484
mob: +45 2875 1484
fax: +45 3532 1480