[Taxacom] Help shape the development of the Catalogue of Life

[Meirion Jones]

Dear Taxacom subscriber,

The Catalogue of Life is an index of scientific and common names for most of the world's plants and animals arranged as a family tree.

This is your opportunity to shape the future development of the Catalogue by telling us what else you would like it to include.  So, please spare us 15 minutes to complete the survey before the closing date of Monday 16 November 2009.

Did you know that the Catalogue of Life is a regularly updated index of scientific and common names containing 1.1 million species of plants, animals, fungi and microbes arranged within a single taxonomic hierarchy?  This is 60% of the anticipated total of 1.8 million presently known species worldwide and is considered to represent the best effort at a comprehensive catalogue.

With European Commission funding, the Distributed Dynamic Diversity Databases for Life project, or 4D4Life for short, aims to develop further the underlying technical architecture of the Catalogue to deliver its services to a wide range of users from the amateur naturalist to the research scientist, and organisations, including government, education, non-governmental and commercial.

An important element of the project is the user survey that BGCI is conducting to find out more about how people use the Catalogue and what improvements they would like to see.  The last survey was done nearly 5 years ago and since then the Catalogue has grown and developed.

You can find the survey here:
http://www.bgci.org/colsurvey

You'll also find a link from the survey to the latest newsletter reporting on the progress of the project; the next issue is due out in March 2010.

Many thanks,

Meirion Jones
BGCI

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