Donald shares his views on GBIF and his plans for the future on this video.

Dear participants of the online discussion on data publishing,

Welcome!

Join the NPT group on GBIF's community site!!

The Nodes Portal Toolkit (NPT) will provide the platform to enable the joint development of web portals or components thereof by Nodes. The NPT will enable users to deploy and maintain their own biodiversity data-portal in a flexible, modular and customizable way. The NPT will be based on Drupal, a content management system (CMS), that supports community development of web portals. 

Please find background information: 

1. in the Frequently Asked Questions document     

2. in the powerpoint presentation Nodes Portal Toolkit Primer 

3. on the demo site of NPT Startup

The news widget of the Community Site is open for postings by ALL the members of the site: Make the most of it!

"Recently, the GBIF development group have been asked to communicate more on the work being carried out in the secretariat.  To quote one message:

'IMHO, simply making all these discussions public via a basic mailing list could help people like me ... have a better awareness of what's going on... We could add our comments / identify possible drawbacks / make some "scalability tests"... In fact I'm really eager to participate to this process' (developer in Belgium)

To kick things off, we plan to make better use of the existing developer blog (http://gbif.blogspot.com), and have set a target of posting 2-3 times a week.  This is a technical blog, so the anticipated audience includes developers, database administrators, and those interested in following details of the GBIF software development.  We have always welcomed external contributers to this blog, and we invite any developers working on publishing content through the GBIF network, or developing tools that make use of content discoverable and accessible through GBIF, to write posts." (... more from Tim Robertson)

Presently, we are in a test phase to collect feedback on the usefulness of this approach. As the GBIF Community site is intended to support higher level Node-to-Node communications, we decided to maintain the existing developer blog separately for the more technically focused contents, while linking it to the Community site whereever appropriate. If you are interested in the technical goings-on, please follow the blog and get in touch: http://gbif.blogspot.com

To assist us in the implementation of the project, ANTABIF seeks an enthusiastic scientist to coordinate the construction of a web-based Antarctic biodiversity data portal. The science officer will be offered a one-year, full time position starting July 1st, 2011 or earlier, and will be based at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (www.naturalsciences.be). The position offered is equivalent to that of assistant, or Data Acquisitions Manager in the Belgian Biodiversity Platform (www.biodiversity.be), taking into account the specific tasks and responsibilities connected to the ANTABIF project. She/he will work under the supervision of the project promoter and in close collaboration with the ANTABIF project manager and IT specialist.

More information here: http://share.biodiversity.aq/Job%20Offer/Profiles%20AntaBIF%202011_final.pdf

We announce here that a new section focused on GBIF.ES e-Learning is available at the website of Spanish GBIF Node. In this section, apart from some general concepts about what Electronic Learning is, you can find information about: the scenario for the development and selection of a Learning Management System (LMS); the ATutor 2.0 Learning Management System (used by the Coordination Unit of GBIF.ES), the AContent repository where all the online courses are stored, links to the virtual training workshops organized by the Coordination Unit and other useful resources for distance education. It is also possible to download either a complete ATutor User Guide or a User Guide just for students, both in Spanish.

All this information is available at:  http://www.gbif.es/eLearningGbifes.php (in Spanish)

The Pondoland Centre of Endemism (PCE), located within the Wild Coast, South Africa, is recognised for its extensive biodiversity, both terrestrial and marine.  Several organisations are working together in this region to both record, map and document scientific inventories using the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) system, and to engage with local communities in terms of ensuring sustainable livelihood activities and eco-tourism opportunities.

Please join the Pondoland Centre of Endemism, ATBI Group at http://community.gbif.org/pg/groups/11101/pondoland-centre-of-endemism-atbi/.

 We have released for comment a draft of the GBIFKOS White Paper, a set of recommendations to GBIF for the deployment and community development of Knowledge Organization Systems (e.g. Controlled Vocabularies, Ontologies, Thesauri, etc., and their management).

This current Community Site page for comment is also accessible as
 http://bit.ly/GBIFKOS_Comments. Please reply at that page so we have comments all in one place.

The current GBIFKOS Draft White paper is also accessible as http://bit.ly/GBIFKOS_2010-11-25-0400 

Bob Morris, Convener, GBIFKOS White Paper Group

The aim of Antartic Field Guides (AFGs) is to help scientist and others to their build, share and download a custom AFG, for a trip to Antarctica. With AFG, users can create a Field Guide with all the species they are interested in or around the places where they will be going. 

The pages are generated on-the-fly from the contents of authoritative, quality controlled data resources, and ensures the user to access up-to-date information about the group of organisms he/she is particularly interested in. Even if the primary focus is for scientists, the AFGs are open and free for all to enjoy.