GFBio (German Federation for the Curation of Biological Data, www.gfbio.org) is a joint project between 19 German research institutions that aims to build a common infrastructure to store and reuse biological research data from various heterogeneous sources.

The Terminology Server (http://terminologies.gfbio.org/), developed by the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum and the Institute of Computer Science (both part of the Freie Universität Berlin), is a core component of the GFBio infrastructure. It allows users to share various kinds of terminologies, ranging from simple controlled vocabularies to complex ontologies, with other researchers.

The Terminology Server relies on common standards for Semantic Web Technologies and its public APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) allow for an easy integration of terminological data into data management tools for other researchers to use.

In this talk we will explain the technical aspects of the GFBio Terminology Server, present various ways how the Terminology Server can and will be used and show different possibilities how users can contribute their terminologies.

The Terminology Server can also be used by scientists and institutions not associated with GFBio and its code will be made available under an open source license.