<div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><p style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">Hello Folks,</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial;font-weight:bold"><br></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial;font-weight:bold">Please take a moment to complete the </span><span style="text-decoration:underline;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-weight:bold;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><a href="http://www.vertnet.org/feedback/sustainabilitysurvey.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration:none">VertNet Sustainability Survey</a> </span><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial;font-weight:bold">(</span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-weight:bold;text-decoration:underline;white-space:pre-wrap"><a href="http://goo.gl/p6Y4ao" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/p6Y4ao</a></span><span style="vertical-align:baseline;line-height:1.15;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial;font-weight:bold">).</span><span style="vertical-align:baseline;line-height:1.15;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial"> It’ll only take about 5 minutes of your time, but it’s 5 minutes that will assure the continued availability of the VertNet network and all of the data it publishes. <b>It's up only for a short time!</b></span></p>
<br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial"></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">Why should I complete the survey?</span></p>
<br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial"></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">We need to know what you think of us. We want, in fact we </span><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial;font-weight:bold">need</span><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">, to know what you think about our services and products. Without your feedback, we can’t achieve our goal to deliver a plan to sustain VertNet and it’s services into the future. This includes everything we do: Dataset Publication, Data Quality Improvement, Statistics and Reporting, Customer Service, Training and Capacity Building, and the Data Portal.</span></p>
<br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial"></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">More than three years ago the VertNet team proposed to NSF that we would seek ways to address the challenge of sustainability in two ways. VertNet would:</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">(1) strive to reduce the costs necessary to maintain hardware, software, and IT services to keep biodiversity data publicly accessible.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">(2) engage the biodiversity and data user community in conversation to explore existing and future strategies for the long-term sustainability of digitization and data-sharing efforts.</span></p>
<br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial"></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">So far, we’ve taken great strides to accomplish these two goals:</span></p>
<br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial"></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">We’ve developed and implemented a data publishing procedure (</span><a href="http://www.vertnet.org/join/ipt.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">using the IPT</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">) and a portal architecture that reduces the cost needed to maintain the network. We believe our cloud-based infrastructure is a huge step toward sustainability. Despite these successes, it still takes our team time and money to publish datasets and maintain the portal. We’ve been engaged in a serious effort to learn as much as we can about sustainability, funding models, and how VertNet delivers its services to the community. This includes participation in an intensive sustainability training course, </span><a href="http://www.sr.ithaka.org/content/sustaining-digital-resources%E2%80%94training-course" target="_blank" style="text-decoration:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Sustaining Digital Collections</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">, developed by </span><a href="http://www.sr.ithaka.org/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Ithaka S+R</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">, and supported by the </span><a href="http://www.mellon.org/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Mellon Foundation</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial"> (we’re right in middle of it, so more on that when we’re done). We’ve also been accepted to participate in the Ecological Society of America’s </span><a href="http://esa.org/sbi/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Sustaining Biological Infrastructure Workshop</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial"> in June, 2014.</span></p>
<br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial"></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">But now we need your help.</span></p>
<br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial"></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">If you value what we do, as well as how VertNet and other data portals publish biodiversity data and provide services, please complete our </span><a href="http://www.vertnet.org/feedback/sustainabilitysurvey.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Sustainability Survey</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">.</span></p>
<br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial"></span><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent;font-family:Arial">We thank you for your support. We’ll let you know what the community has to say.</span></span><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<font color="#000000" face="Arial"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></font></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><font color="#000000" face="Arial"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Best,</span></font></div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Dave Bloom and the VertNet Team</div></div>