Email from Meredith Lane to John Pickering, 2 August, 2005

Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2005 17:21:12 +0200
From: Meredith Lane
To: pick@discoverlife.org
Cc: "'GBIF Scientific Staff'" , djanzen@sas.upenn.edu,
"Daniel R. Brooks" , sknapp@nhm.ac.uk
Subject: RE: technology centers + search tool

To: John Pickering, Discover Life
Re: your 4 July message about "technology centers + search tool"

Dear Pick,

As always, those of us who know you are impressed with your enthusiasm
and energy, and we know you have an expansive and inclusive vision for
disseminating biodiversity information. At the same time, we would like
to remind you that you don't have to invent all the wheels yourself,
though it may feel that way to you at times! There are already a number
of initiatives in place that would be most pleased to work with you to
accomplish the goals you have in mind.

The case I have most in mind, of course, is GBIF -- we are striving to
build an information architecture that will enable multidimensional
sharing of biodiversity data in a way that will make it possible to
combine and recombine primary data depending on the necessity of the
analysis. The emphasis here is on sharing and recombining data, it
seems your focus on users is parallel to ours and not at all at odds.
It is also important to remember that there are regional networks (e.g.
IABIN, REMIB) and national nodes (e.g. INBio, CONABIO) that have been
working within Mesoamerica (to choose just one region you have
mentioned), for some time and with considerable effect, toward the
same goals you have.

GBIF is already partnering with these networks, and others, to try to
establish mechanisms for getting biodiversity discovery and taxonomic
analysis available on the Web in fairly immediate ways. We would like
the opportunity to talk with you and your informatics personnel about
the several ways to do this, so that none of us reinvent unnecessary
wheels and so we can get a wide variety of biodiversity information to
as many people as efficiently and easily as possible .

We at GBIF are sure that we and DiscoverLife have common goals, and that
we share these goals with yet other organisations. We would welcome the
opportunity to meet with you (either in person or via a conference call
or other virtual method) to talk over these matters of mutual concern
and potential future collaboration .

Sincerely,
Meredith

Meredith A. Lane, PhD mlane@gbif.org
Public & Scientific Liaison
Global Biodiversity Information Facility
GBIF Secretariat tel +45 3532 1470
dl: +45 3532 1484
mob: +45 2875 1484
fax: +45 3532 1480

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