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URGENT UPDATE: Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) Annual Meeting 2006 - Reminder of late registration penalties
by Adrian Rissone 23 Aug '06

23 Aug '06

This message contains time-critical information requiring immediate action. Please read it now. You are receiving this message because you have registered for TDWG 2006, expressed interest in attending the Meeting, or have attended previous TDWG meetings. If you are receiving this message in error, or do not wish to be contacted in the future, please accept our apologies for intruding and send a request to be removed from future mailings to A.Rissone(a)nhm.ac.uk with Subject line "TDWG Direct Mail Removal Request". The 2006 Annual Meeting and Symposium of the Taxonomic Databases Working Group will be held at the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, from 15 - 22 October 2006. The meeting web site can be accessed here: http://tdwg2006.tdwg.org/ Registration is open now. There is an active link on the Registration Page to the RegOnline system which is handling registration for the meeting and has further links to discount booking at the recommended hotel and discount car rental. A PLEA FROM THE ORGANISERS From previous experience we know that delegates are slow to register and make hotel bookings. Anyone who attended the meeting in St. Petersburg in 2005 will know the possible consequences of late hotel bookings and late visa applications! Late registration is very disruptive to the smooth running of the meeting, making it difficult to plan meeting rooms, catering and transport. Late hotel bookings cause problems for the recommended hotel and may cost the TDWG money if we do not fulfill our advance booking commitment. This is a strong plea from the Meeting Organisers for ALL delegates to register and book your hotel room immediately. If you require help or further information please contact me without delay. PLEASE NOTE A late registration penalty fee of 50 $US will apply after 13 September 2006. The deadline for hotel discount is 13 September 2006. ABSTRACTS FOR PRESENTATIONS Abstracts for presentations by delegates were invited in June. Please see the Abstracts Page for details and Instructions for Authors. Abstracts MUST be submitted in the required format. The official deadline for Abstracts was 20 August 2006. This has been extended to 23:59 GMT on Saturday 2 September. There will be no further extension. Please accept our apologies for cross-posting if you receive this message more than once. Regards, Adrian Rissone

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Proposals for a new TDWG Constitution and Standards Development Process
by Blum, Stan 16 Aug '06

16 Aug '06

TDWG members: I am pleased to announce the availability of two documents for your review and consideration for adoption as this year's annual meeting: 1) a revised TDWG Constitution http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/pub/Process/WebHome/TDWG_Constitution_2006-08-16… df and 2) a revised set of TDWG By-Laws (Standards Development Process) http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/pub/Process/WebHome/TDWG_Process_2006-08-16.pdf Both documents were developed by the Process subgroup and are the result of many hours of deliberation. The new Process, in particular, is a critical element in improving TDWG's social infrastructure for biodiversity information sharing. If you have any questions or comments about these proposal please: 1) email me directly, or 2) join the Process subgroup's mailing list (tdwg-process(a)lists.tdwg.org) and post your question there, or 3) join the TDWG wiki (http://wiki.tdwg.org) and post your question there. The TDWG Executive Committee will announce the specific voting procedures in the coming weeks before the meeting. What follows below are explanations of how the proposed Constitution differs from the earlier Constitution, and how the revised process differs from the existing process. First, wherever we (the Process subgroup and primary officers) had NOT reached a consensus, we have reverted (substantially) to the existing Constitution. The most significant cases in this category were: the retention of "Regional Secretaries" as officers (with a slight modification of responsibilities), and the retention of only two co-opted Executive Committee members (to be selected by the elected committee members). Second, we have added provisions to make it explicit that the Executive Committee has the power to appoint other individuals or groups to do specific work. Through this general provision, the Executive Committee will have the ability to approve interest and task group charters, as well as appoint web masters, standards editors, or fill any other roles as needed. Third, we have removed the By-laws from the Constitution. It was not clear earlier whether the by-laws were part of the constitution, or just presented there for convenience. In the new draft, the rules for establishing and changing the by-laws is covered, but the by-laws will be a separate document. Fourth, language has been edited throughout to remove ambiguity, establish consistency, improve readability, and remove unnecessary words. The list below highlights the changes that are new and I hope acceptable based on our discussions over the last year, including a meeting in Madrid in early June. Article 1: we have rephrased the purpose as follows: "...to establish international collaboration among the creators, managers and users of biodiversity information..." I think this is more precise as well as more inclusive than "biological database projects" or "biological information repositories". We used the term biodiversity rather than biological because that term accurately circumscribes our special niche. Article 1.c: We have removed the reference to the newsletter as a kind of publication. Article 5 (Executive Committee): changed the formatting to a list; added item d. to the list of responsibilities/powers as follows: "d. may appoint an individual or group of individuals to perform specific work or an ongoing function for TDWG;" Under item "j.", I removed the qualifier "electronically" from the phrase. I don't think it's necessary to say how (what technologies should be used) the membership should be kept informed. Article 6 (Officers). We changed the name from Chairman to Chair. That's generally done in the US now to remove gender bias. (Chairperson is also used, but I think it's more awkward.) Also removed "to him" from "enacts such functions as are assigned >to him< by the Executive Committee." We restored the Regional Secretaries as members of the Executive Committee because we hadn't reached a consensus about how to replace them. The Executive Committee will have greater power and therefore greater responsibility to represent the interests of the membership under the new Process. That means they will have a representative, "steering committee"-type of role in more decisions, and that alone is justification for keeping broad representation on the Executive. We talked a lot in Madrid and over email about people not having specific roles, but given this greater emphasis on the steering function, one does not have to be doing work for TDWG (e.g., as an editor or secretary) to represent a constituency on the Executive. There is also a clear sensitivity to concentrating too much power in the three primary Executive Officers. So the composition of the executive will remain unchanged, except that we have removed mention of the newsletter and standards editors. These can be appointed by the Executive, they just won't be on the Executive. Finally, I have fleshed out the language of Article 10 (Voting), such that we now have broad consensus as an explicit goal, and the Executive is given the operational responsibility of determining when we have a case where a consensus cannot be reached, but a decision must be taken (i.e., a preferable alternative cannot be devised). ----- The TDWG Process for Standards Development is also known as the TDWG By-Laws. The previous by-laws were only a couple paragraphs long; while this version is three and half pages. The proposed process differs in several important ways from the existing one. The new process calls for interest groups to provide a forum for general discussions in an area, and task groups (created within interest groups) to do specific work. Both interest groups and task groups are required to have published charters, which describe the group's purpose and operation. Interest groups and task groups are also required to submit (and publish) annual reports to ensure that progress is made and results are communicated to the membership. The review process itself also differs from the current one in that it calls for the Executive Committee to appoint a review manager, who will first seek independent expert reviews (much like we would do with a scientific paper), and then issue a public request for comment. The Executive Committee is empowered to judge the results of these reviews and may either advance the standard along the track or return the draft to the task group for revision. The members do not need to vote on a standard (they just need to comment). Respectfully, Stanley D. Blum Convener, Process Subgroup

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CORRECTION: Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) Annual Meeting 2006
by Adrian Rissone 29 Jun '06

29 Jun '06

This message contains time-critical information. Please read it now. The 2006 Annual Meeting and Symposium of the Taxonomic Databases Working Group will be held at the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, from 15 - 22 October 2006. The meeting web site can be accessed here: http://tdwg2006.tdwg.org/ Humble apologies for the incorrect dates given in the previous posting to this mailing list and thanks to Arturo Ariño for pointing it out! The correct dates are shown below and are correct on the Meeting web site. Registration is open now. There is an active link on the Registration Page to the RegOnline system which is handling registration for the meeting and has further links to discount booking at the recommended hotel and discount car rental. The deadline for hotel discount is 13 September 2006. A late registration penalty fee will apply after 13 September 2006. Abstracts for presentations by delegates are invited. Please see the Abstracts Page for details and Instructions for Authors. Abstracts MUST be submitted in the required format and MUST be received by 20 August 2006. Priority in the busy meeting schedule will be given to abstracts received by 15 July 2006. All abstracts will be peer reviewed. Please accept our apologies for cross-posting if you receive this message more than once. Regards, Adrian Rissone

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GUID-2 Report
by Ricardo Scachetti Pereira 29 Jun '06

29 Jun '06

Dear mailing list subscriber, The Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG, http://www.tdwg.org/) with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has just held the second of two workshops to address the need for a system of globally unique identifiers (GUID) for use in biodiversity informatics. The report describing the outcomes of the meeting and the plans for deployment of LSIDs in our community is available at: http://www.tdwg.gbif.org/fileadmin/subgroups/tip/GUID2Report.pdf (PDF) http://wiki.gbif.org/guidwiki/wikka.php?wakka=GUID2Report (web page) We are encouraging feedback on the report and particularly the deployment strategy. Please send your comments to the TDWG-GUID mailing list at tdwg-guid(a)mailman.nhm.ku.edu, or add them to the TDWG-GUID wiki at http://wiki.gbif.org/guidwiki/wikka.php?wakka=GUID2ReportComments. Sincerely, Donald Hobern, Ricardo Pereira and Lee Belbin

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Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) Annual Meeting 2006
by Adrian Rissone 29 Jun '06

29 Jun '06

This message contains time-critical information. Please read it now. The 2006 Annual Meeting and Symposium of the Taxonomic Databases Working Group will be held at the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, from 15 - 22 October 2006. The meeting web site can be accessed here: http://tdwg2006.tdwg.org/ The Theme of the Symposium is Building Biodiversity Data Applications * From Nomenclators to managing inconsistent taxonomies (including Zoobank, IPNI, etc.) * Species Banks and the taxonomic work process (including EDIT) * Integrating & sharing biotic information * "Boxed" Solutions * Applications and Standards for Invasive Species * Applications and Standards for Conservation Additional Themes for the Meeting will include (in no particular order): * The new TDWG Infrastructure * New and emerging standards * Integrating standards * Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs) * Imaging * Ontologies & semantics * Data representation languages (UML, BNF, RDF, XML) * Biodiversity Heritage Library The Meeting will also include presentation of the work of TDWG Subgroups/Interest Groups, with working sessions during the week. For details of current TDWG Subgroups please visit the main TDWG web site. Registration is open now. There is an active link on the Registration Page to the RegOnline system which is handling registration for the meeting and has further links to discount booking at the recommended hotel and discount car rental. The deadline for hotel discount is 14 July 2006. A late registration penalty fee will apply after 14 July 2006. Abstracts for presentations by delegates are invited. Please see the Abstracts Page for details and Instructions for Authors. Abstracts MUST be submitted in the required format and MUST be received by 20 August 2006. Priority in the busy meeting schedule will be given to abstracts received by 15 July 2006. All abstracts will be peer reviewed. Please accept our apologies for cross-posting if you receive this message more than once. On behalf of the TDWG Executive I would like to welcome you to TDWG 2006 and look forward to seeing you in St. Louis. Regards, Adrian

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Position at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: e-Taxonomy Co-ordinator
by Dave Roberts 21 Jun '06

21 Jun '06

Dear all, apologies for cross-posting and duplication. I am using this as a test posting because I have been getting messages refused. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew invites applications for the following position (closing date - 30 June 2006): EDIT e-Taxonomy Co-ordinator Fixed term contract to February 2011 Working with a team of plant diversity specialists, you will be involved in work package 6 of the EU-funded EDIT (European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy) consortium. Work package 6 (Title: Unifying Revisionary Taxonomy) aims to bring together fragmented taxonomic and biodiversity resources for delivery via a web portal and to encourage integration of international taxonomic effort. Your main duties will include researching, assembling and delivering the digital content for a web portal, focusing on palms and other monocot plant families, liaising closely with the portal designer at the Natural History Museum, London. Content for the web portal will include nomenclature, taxonomic descriptions, images, identification guides, geographical, ecological and conservation data. You will also liaise with a wide range of stakeholders and participate in discussions on data, portal requirements and taxonomic issues. With a degree in Biology or related discipline, you will have experience of biodiversity data resources and training in a biodiversity-oriented discipline. You will ideally have a PhD in a Biological discipline, or equivalent work experience, and will be familiar with flowering plant systematics, information management and databases. You will have excellent communication and organisational skills and the ability to deal with challenging and complex issues. Self-motivation is also essential as the role demands autonomy and close attention to data quality. Salary is £21,308 per annum (pay award pending) and benefits include a choice of final salary or stakeholder pension, generous annual leave and a stunning work environment. Application packs are available from our website http://www.kew.org (click on the link at the bottom of the homepage). Alternatively, please contact the HR Department, RBG Kew, on 020 8332 5184/5150 (24 hour answerphone). Please quote Ref EDIT1. Closing date: 30 June 2006.

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TDWG Demographic Survey - Results
by Adrian Rissone 19 Apr '06

19 Apr '06

The TDWG 2006 Demographic Survey - Results Background In January/February 2006 the TDWG Infrastructure Project Team conducted a survey of TDWG Members and Potential Members Results A summary of the results of the survey, and more detailed data, can be viewed at http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/TIP/TipSurveyResults Regards, Adrian Rissone TDWG Secretary A.Rissone(a)nhm.ac.uk

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open access to scientific data: Decision at the Convention on Biological Diversity follow up 8th conference of the parties.
by Donat Agosti 04 Apr '06

04 Apr '06

[sorry for cross-posting with taxacom] Dear colleagues COP-8, the follow-up conference of the parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity, ended on March 31 with a decision of importance for our work. This is another step to open up archives; it is also another demanding the need for technologies to make the exchange technically possible, thus a challenge to TDWG... Here the excerpt: SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL COOPERATION AND THE CHM (Clearing House Mechanism. Ie data exchange mechanism set up within the CBD framework): Discussions on scientific and technical cooperation and the CHM (UNEP/CBD/COP/8/4/Rev.1, 17, 17/Add.1, and 18) took place in WG-II on Thursday, 23 March, and Tuesday, 28 March. A decision was approved by WG-II on 28 March. On scientific and technical cooperation, delegates highlighted collaboration with other initiatives, with Colombia stressing repatriation of information. Canada urged parties to provide free and open access to information and, supported by the EU, suggested reference to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Brazil expressed concern about the cost implications of CHM activities, and delegates agreed to take notes of Brazil's reservation in the decision. Final Decision: In the decision (UNEP/CBD/COP/8/L.5), the COP adopts the annexed CHM updated strategic plan for the period 2005-2010 and the CHM work programme up to 2010. THE COP INVITES PARTIES AND OTHER GOVERNMENTS, AS APPROPRIATE, TO PROVIDE FREE AND OPEN ACCESS TO ALL PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE PUBLIC-GOOD RESEARCH RESULTS, ASSESSMENTS, MAPS AND DATABASES ON BIODIVERSITY, IN ACCORDANCE WITH NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LEGISLATION It also requests parties, and invites other governments and donors, to continue providing financial and technical support to develop national and regional CHMs. The COP requests the Executive Secretary to prepare a report on progress made in the implementation of the strategic plan of the CHM and its work programme for 2005-2010, for COP-10 consideration. Dr. Donat Agosti Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History and Smithsonian Institution Email: agosti(a)amnh.org Web: http://antbase.org Skype: agostileu CV: http://antbase.org/agosticv_2003.html Dalmaziquai 45 3005 Bern Switzerland +41-31-351 7152

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IT job in NHM London
by Dave Roberts 29 Mar '06

29 Mar '06

Dear all, apologies for cross-posting. Under the EU-EDIT grant the NHM is recruiting an IT person to develop web taxonomy. Details can be found at http://www.jobsgopublic.com/ and search for "IT Researcher" or see the current issue of Nature (30th March 06). Briefly the post is 4.5 years starting this August. I'd be grateful if you would draw this to the attention of anyone tha t you think might be interested. Cheers, Dave

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Survey: Feedback and Requirements for Use of GBIF Data Portal
by Donald Hobern 23 Mar '06

23 Mar '06

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) has been operating its prototype data portal for biodiversity data (http://www.gbif.net/) since 2004 and is now developing a new portal incorporating lessons learned from these early experiences (to be released at the end of 2006). The aim of this portal will be to provide rapid access to distributed biodiversity data resources from all over the world. The portal should support user access through HTML web browsers, as well as machine access by other portals and analytical tools through web service programming interfaces. GBIF wishes to receive the widest possible feedback on the existing prototype data portal and user requirements for the new portal. As part of this process, we have set up the following online survey and would like to receive responses by 30 April 2006: Feedback and Requirements for use of GBIF Data Portal - end-user requirements for access to biodiversity data http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=279441780723 We plan to offer two further related surveys over the next few weeks: Feedback and Requirements for providers of data to GBIF Data Portal requirements from individuals and organisations sharing data through the GBIF network Technical Feedback on architecture for GBIF Data Portal review of architecture and design for GBIF data portal and its associated web services For more information on GBIFs plans for the data portal, please see: The GBIF Data Portal Strategy, available from: http://circa.gbif.net/Public/irc/gbif/dadi/library?l=/architecture The GBIF Data Portal Design wiki at: http://wiki.gbif.org/dadiwiki/ Please note that this survey relates to the GBIF Data Portal. GBIF also operates the GBIF Communications Portal (http://www.gbif.org/), which provides information about the organisation and its activities. An opportunity is provided on the last page of this survey to comment on the GBIF's use of two separate portals. Thank you for your help. Donald --------------------------------------------------------------- Donald Hobern (dhobern(a)gbif.org) Programme Officer for Data Access and Database Interoperability Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark Tel: +45-35321483 Mobile: +45-28751483 Fax: +45-35321480 ---------------------------------------------------------------

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