[Taxacom] Biodiversity Collections Index

[Gail Kampmeier]

Hi Roger!

I wondered if you were aware of the efforts of the US National 
Science Foundation in this endeavor?  When I attended the AIBS 
(American Institute of Biological Sciences) Council meeting last May, 
the following was presented

Progress report: Interagency Working Group on Scientific Collections 
and its Activities
* Judith Skog, Deputy Division Director, Division for Biological 
Infrastructure, National
Science Foundation

AIBS met in conjunction with the Natural Science Collections Alliance 
http://www.nscalliance.org/index.asp, who also had a presentation on 
this topic, where the groups were going to be working together.  At 
least as far as the North American (beyond??) collections go, they 
had questionnaires etc. that they were prepared to distribute on this 
topic.

I don't have my notes from this meeting at my fingertips, but it 
seems that if you haven't already, that joining forces here would 
make a lot of sense.  Here is a link that NSCA provided on its 
website http://www.nscalliance.org/new_noteworthy.asp#15, which 
references the website they have started... 
http://www.CollectionsWeb.org/

Cheers!
Gail

====you wrote (and I received in the digest):
From: Roger Hyam (TDWG) <rogerhyam at mac.com>
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Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:50:39 +0000
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	<roger at biodiversitycollectionsindex.org>
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Subject: [Taxacom] Biodiversity Collections Index
Message: 5

Dear Taxacomist,

I wish to announce the start of a project to build the Biodiversity 
Collections Index (BCI).

http://www.biodiversitycollectionsindex.org/

BCI aims to facilitate the understanding, conservation and 
utilisation of global biodiversity by creating a single annotated 
index of all collections of biodiversity materials used in research. 
BCI intends to do this by collaborating with the organisations and 
individuals who curate these collections and the information about 
them.

Note that this is an index to every collection containing specimens 
not every specimen.

Please visit the initial project website to read more about the 
project. There is a page for you to register your interest. If you do 
this you will be kept informed of developments up to the launch of 
the system in the summer. Importantly there is also an FAQ page as 
many people have similar questions on first hearing about the project.

A kick-off meeting is being held in Washington DC at the end of the 
month. You can read more about this on the associated TDWG NCD wiki 
page.

http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/NCD/BiodiversityCollectionsIndexKickOffMeeting

If you have issues that you think should be raised at the meeting 
please contact the most relevant participant or me directly. We plan 
to add the minutes to the NCD wiki as the meeting progresses.

I hope that BCI can be of service to our community over the coming years.

Best regards,

Roger Hyam

-------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Hyam
Roger at BiodiversityCollectionsIndex.org
http://www.BiodiversityCollectionsIndex.org