GBIF has issued a request for proposals to draft a GBIF ‘Beginner's guide to issuing Persistent Identifiers for biodiversity resources’.

Recognising that the provision of Persistent Identifiers for biodiversity resources is one of the central challenges to developing a global bioinformatics infrastructure, in 2009, GBIF convened a task group, the LSID GUID Task Group (LGTG), to explore the issues and offer recommendations on the way forward that will enable GBIF to provide architecture leadership and best practices for implementation. The report  of the task group strongly emphasises the need for GBIF to educate the community in general Persistent Identifier principles and practices. One of the perceived needs is for a short guide that would introduce data custodians to the best practices involved in issuing such Persistent Identifiers. This call is for development of such a GBIF guide.

Further information on the call is available on the GBIF news site (http://www.gbif.org/communications/news-and-events/showsingle/article/request-for-proposals-to-draft-gbif-booklet/) including instructions for submitting an application.

GBIF will provide an honorarium of €5,000 to support preparation of the guide.  Proposals should be sent to Dr Éamonn Ó Tuama, Senior Programme Officer, Inventory, Discovery, Access by 31st May 2010 (email: eotuama@gbif.org).

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Éamonn Ó Tuama, M.Sc., Ph.D. (eotuama@gbif.org),

Senior Programme Officer, Inventory, Discovery, Access (IDA),

Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat,

Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, DENMARK
Phone:  +45 3532 1494; Fax:  +45 3532 1480