GBIF position paper on Vocabs/Ontologies: invitation to participate in survey

GBIF is pleased to announce that in response to the call for proposals to develop a position paper on enabling a shared infrastructure for the development, maintenance and governance of vocabularies and ontologies for biodiversity informatics, a team led by Bob Morris (UMASS-Boston, Harvard University Herbaria & Plazi Verein) has been awarded the contract. In order to put together the position paper, the group is soliciting opinions, experiences, needs, and resources already in place about Knowledge Organisation for biodiversity research. Please go to http://surveymonkey.com/GBIFKOSurvey to participate in the (brief) survey.

The Coordination Unit of the Spanish GBIF Node launches the 4th Workshop about Digital Images for Biodiversity Studies. It will be hold in October 2010 from the 27th to the 29th in the computing facility of the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid (CSIC). This workshop is conceived for those experts and researchers working with natural history collection specimens and those involved in research projects about biodiversity who are interested in the management and the publication in the Internet of digital images.

The deadline to send pre-subscription forms is September the 30th, 2010

The recommendation of the month: References of GBIF in scientific articles

Articles from both professional publications and the popular media that refer to GBIF or GBIF data are listed and available for download on the Internet. The GBIF Secretariat maintains two bibliographic spreadsheets online. Access to them is both open and free. There are 444 references to GBIF that have appeared in such journals as Science, Nature, BioScience, The Scientist and 339 popular media citations since 1998.

GBIF seeks a NPT Project Coordinator

GBIF is seeking a Project Coordinator for the development of the Nodes Portal Toolkit (NPT). The NPT will be a suite of tools to deploy biodiversity data portals at the Participant Level. This position is for a part-time contractor, preferably from the Nodes Community, and will start in September 2010 and end in December 2011. The contractor will be able to work remotely and is not expected to relocate to Copenhagen for this position. The deadline for applications is 3rd September 2010. Applications should be sent to nptcoordinator@gbif.org. All details on the position and application process are available on the GBIF Website.

Official Launch of the GBIF Community Site

The GBIF Secretariat has officially launched the GBIF Community Site at the address: community.gbif.org . The site concept was first presented to the Nodes Committee and the Governing Board at their meetings in Copenhagen in October 2009. Since then, it has been tested by diverse GBIF Task and Interest Groups, Regional Nodes Committee groups, experts networks... over 40 groups and 200 people have been involved in this process. The site is meant to be a social platform for collaborative projects, sharing of information and expertise, announcements or helpdesk and mentoring. You are encourage to check the quick guide for a brief overview of the features of the new site.

Call for proposals for the first GBIF Young Researchers Award