[NHCOLL-L:5015] GBIF: Three reports on different aspects of Data Discovery and Publishing now available on the net

[Rabeler, Richard]

Colleagues:

On behalf of SPNHC and GBIF, I wanted to make the community aware of three key documents that have recently been released by GBIF and are now available online. The GBIF Secretariat has developed a set of draft documents that has been endorsed by the Science Committee.  Please find below a short outline of the content of these documents:


1.       State-of-the-Network 2010: Discovery and Publishing of Primary Biodiversity Data through the GBIF Network



2.       Best Practice Guide for 'Data Discovery and Publishing Strategy and Action Plans' and


3.       A special issue of the journal Biodiversity Informatics on 'Towards a Global Strategy and Action Plan for Discovery and Publishing of Natural History Collections Data'.

State-of-the-Network 2010: Discovery and Publishing of Primary Biodiversity Data through the GBIF Network: This report provides a comprehensive overview of the discovery and publishing activities across the GBIF network since 2004. In addition to the overview of publishing activities, the report also attempts a systematic gap analysis of the mobilised data. As of today, the GBIF network facilitates access to over 216 million primary biodiversity data records. However, our progress in ensuring discovery and access to required volumes of 'fit-for-use' data is far from envisaged targets, and in particular in closing priority gaps.

This report is accessible at http://www2.gbif.org/State-of-the-network-2010-prefinal.pdf

Best Practice Guide for Data Discovery and Publishing Strategy and Action Plans. As evident from the State of the Network 2010 a clear need exits for guidelines on how to develop needs-driven data discovery and publishing strategies. To address this need (expressed by the Participants), the 'Best Practice Guide' has been developed. We hope this Guide will greatly inspire and assist Participants as well as data publishers to develop demand-driven data discovery and publishing strategies and action plans.

The Guide is accessible at http://www2.gbif.org/BestPracticeGuide-final.pdf

A special issue of the journal Biodiversity Informatics on 'Towards a Global Strategy and Action Plan for Discovery and Publishing of Natural History Collections Data'. This special issue consists of eight articles focusing on (a) the recommendations of the GSAP-NHC, (b) approaches in estimating the extent of data, (c) strategies to ensure demand-driven digitisation, and (d) a geo-taxonomic metadata approach for data discovery.

Discovery, digitisation and publishing of natural history collections data have always been a focus of the GBIF initiative. In June 2008, the Secretariat commissioned the Task Group on a 'Global Strategy and Action Plan for mobilisation of Natural History Collections data' (GSAP-NHC)'. To ensure wider uptake of the recommendations of the GSAP-NHC task Group, the Secretariat in collaboration with the Editors of the journal 'Biodiversity Informatics' commissioned this special issue.  The special issue is accessible online at https://journals.ku.edu/index.php/jbi.

One of the articles in the Special issue, "Natural History Specimen Digitization: Challenges and Concerns" by Ana Vollmar, James Alexander Macklin, and Linda Ford, outlines the work of the SPNHC Best Practices intern who was funded in 2009 by the NSF-sponsored Collections Web initiative (http://www.collectionsweb.org/).

For any specific queries regarding these reports, please do not hesitate to contact the Senior Programme Officer concerned, Dr. Vishwas Chavan at vchavan at gbif.org<mailto:vchavan at gbif.org>.

Sincerely,

Richard K. Rabeler
Past President and Head of Delegation to GBIF, SPNHC


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