The purpose of this session is to expose and discuss the major issues in managing and providing federated access to digital information related to biological specimens. The focus will be on data mobilization, information standards, search and discovery, sharing and aggregation, and cyberinfrastructure. Several active projects will be the subjects of presentations.

These projects are in various stages of development and deployment.  GBIF has a history of aggregating delivering occurrence data and is in the process of expanding the data models and information content. The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) is aggregating specimen data, developing new tools, and rapidly increasing the pace of digitization. VertNet  is developing infrastructure to aggregate over several vertebrate information repositories and is particularly strong in community engagement, data improvement, and data mobilization. Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) is developing as an integrated resource for biological occurrence data from the United States. The National Resource for Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections (iDigBio),  is the new permanent national resource that is charged with integrating data from biological research collections around the United States. 

Additional topics may be included in talks and discussion

Data validation with services for geospatial and taxonomic information

Tools for data analysis and use

Tools for transferring data from digitization process to repository

Participating portal projects and speakers:

GBIF, David Remsen

Atlas of Living Australia, Donald Hobern, ALA

VertNet, John Wieczorek, UC Berkeley

Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON), Gerald Guala, USGS

iDigBio, Jose Fortes, University of Florida

Dr. Fortes is available only on Monday and Tuesday, 17-18 October. We ask for you to schedule this session on one of those two days.