[Taxacom] NBII at Botany and mycology 2009

[Mary Barkworth]

NBII Exhibit/booth summary (Botany/Mycology Conference 2009 and ESA
Annual Meeting 2009)

 

 

The USGS National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII)
<http://www.nbii.gov> will have a booth in the exhibits hall - come and
learn about the numerous thematic, regional, national, and international
biological networks and communities that the NBII participates in. These
include being the U.S. national node of the Global Biodiversity
Information Facility (GBIF) <http://www.gbif.org>. GBIF is a
multi-lateral initiative that provides globally-mediated biodiversity
data sharing and exchange standards, plus a global science research
infrastructure to enable such sharing, thereby enhancing the ability of
US scientists to access and share biodiversity data from around the
world. You are especially invited to talk with NBII representatives and
learn how to install and use the new GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit
(IPT) <http://www.gbif.org/News/NEWS1238568696>, and other biological
informatics tools for publishing biodiversity data to the internet, thus
making these data accessible to others via the GBIF data portal and the
US national node (NBII). The GBIF IPT makes sharing your specimen and
observation records and their associated images with the international
community relatively simple. It also enables easy exploration and
visualization of your data through a clean, simple, and easy to use Web
interface, and includes simple and easy-to-use tools for data cleaning
and reporting. Other NBII tools that will be available include systems
which support access to over 50,000 metadata and datasets related to
biodiversity and ecology, demonstration of the value of controlled
vocabulary (thesauri) to support improved discovery and retrieval of
data, and several examples of communities of practice, via
<http://my.nbii.gov>, which are supporting federal, non-federal, state,
and local research, planning, and policy development efforts globally.
 
I asked NBII for this announcement because the resources they will be
showing are really important to all of us interested in making
collections and observation information accessbile - regionally,
nationally, and globally. I apologize to those of you who receive it
through multiple channels. 
 
Associate Professor of Biology and 
Director, Intermountain Herbarium
Utah State University
5305 Old Main Hill
Logan, Utah 84322-5305
U.S.A.