[NHCOLL-L:4309] GBIF - please contribute to this survey

[Rabeler, Richard]

Colleagues:

I would like your assistance in helping to "spread the word" about the upcoming survey being conducted by GBIF to gather more information about who is using GBIF data and for what purposes.  Here is the News release from GBIF describing the survey:

" News: Call for Participation: 'Content Needs' Survey by the GBIF Content Needs Assessment Task Group
The GBIF Secretariat established a Content Needs Assessment Task Group (CNATG) to assess the priority needs of users of GBIF-mediated globally integrated primary biodiversity datasets.
Released on: 	27 April 2009
Contributor: 	Not applicable
News item language: 	English
Spatial coverage: 	Not applicable
Keywords: 	
Source of information: 	
Concerned URL: 	

User needs include:

   1. Access to integrated datasets;
   2. Adequate data volume and content;
   3. Dataset fitness-for-use; and
   4. Mechanisms to identify datasets that have yet to be integrated.

The CNATG will also assess the primary biodiversity data needed for a range of priority applications, identify gaps in biodiversity data currently indexed via GBIF and other informatics organisations to meet these priority applications, and will recommend data mobilisation strategies to fill these gaps.

The CNATG has created a ‘User Survey’ to collect information on the demography of use of biodiversity data, and to understand the content needs of the varied uses. Importantly the survey also seeks to determine the unique scientific and policy contributions of GBIF data that cannot readily be met through other mechanisms. The survey will be launched during the 1st week of May 2009 and will be open for 40 days.

The survey begins with questions that will provide basic information about user profiles. The second section of the survey is designed to understand the ways in which 'primary biodiversity data’ are used by various stakeholders. Here, primary biodiversity data are defined as any digital text or multimedia data records detailing the instance of an organism – the what, where, when, how, and by whom of the organism’s occurrence and recording.

The final set of questions in the survey will collect information on user applications needs that are presently not well-satisfied by the GBIF-accessible data. A key issue relates to the other kinds of data that could be accessible through GBIF. To this end, the survey asks: “what type of data would you like to see be increasingly discoverable and accessible?” Answers may range from plot-based data from ecological studies to data on environmental layers that add value to primary biodiversity data.

Co-Chaired by Drs Dan Faith and Ben Collen, the CNATG will provide recommendations to the GBIF Secretariat by August 2009. The Task Group will meet 24-27 June 2009 at the GBIF Secretariat in Copenhagen, Denmark, to compile and analyse survey responses. This meeting will also provide an opportunity for discussions with GBIF staff. The final report from the Task Group will recommend strategies and priorities (in the short-, medium- and long-terms) for GBIF data mobilisation.

The CNATG kindly requests your assistance in disseminating information on the User Survey to potential respondents. For more details contact Vishwas Chavan, Senior Programme Officer for DIGIT (email: vchavan at gbif.org)."

I recently attended the GBIF North American Nodes meeting and came away with a braodened perspective about the GBIF project, the important work that is being done, and how the data is being used for significant projects around the world.   Please take the survey seriously!

Sincerely,

Richard K. Rabeler
University of Michigan Herbarium
President, Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections