"I am delighted that the 47 countries and 34 international organisations that are currently members of GBIF have secured the future of this young organisation, and again endorsed its work," said Dr. David Penman, Chair of the GBIF Governing Board. "We look forward to many new members joining GBIF during this new phase."

GBIF will continue to work to make biodiversity data and information freely and universally available via the Internet. Its efforts will focus on building Internet infrastructure that enables users to query many databases at once. GBIF also strongly encourages and promotes increases in the amount and quality of biodiversity data available to users on the Internet. Input from communities of users for the data that GBIF makes available is considered essential in GBIF operations.

During its first 5 years, GBIF prototyped its Internet-based information delivery mechanisms, and during this new phase will move the prototype toward full operations. The next phase will also see GBIF building upon the strong partnerships it has developed with other international activities, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity.

As indicated in the Strategic Plan for 2007 2011 that was approved during its 12th Governing Board meeting, during the next 5 years GBIF expects to see the electronic catalogue of scientific names (needed to search for data on species) at least 95% completed. Also, new databases will be generated by GBIF partners, and these will make up to 900 million digital data records available to users such as biodiversity policy makers, natural resource managers and researchers.

GBIF will work with partner organisations to develop and implement information standards and web-services protocols that will facilitate linking biodiversity data records with digital library information, images and other Internet information sources.

GBIF was established for the period 2001 2006 by a Memorandum of Und
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Contact: Meredith A. Lane
mlane@gbif.org
453-532-1484
Global Biodiversity Information Facility
23-Jun-2006


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