During the last five years, an increasing number of botanical collections have begun to develop specimen databases within their institutions. This activity was fostered by a workshop held at the National Science Foundation in 1989 to discuss trends and priorities in the construction of botanical specimen databases. In 1993, the MITRE Consortium released its report on the information management needs of free-standing museums of natural history museums and botanical gardens. Also in 1993, the Department of Energy held a workshop to discuss the development of community databases within the molecular biological community and botanists representing various institutions that wished to serve as regional centers for a national botanical specimen database for North America discussed a framework for such a project. With these and many other projects planned or partly underway, it is important that these projects are designed to enhance interoperability in a distributed networked environment. This proposal requests funds to bring 30 botanist, other biologists, and information technologist to discuss issues affecting the design of an interoperable federation of botanical specimen databases. The result of the workshop will be a report for general distribution over the network as well as to the National Science Foundation that will outline the infrastructure and database design considerations that will guide development projects in the selection or design of systems that enhance interoperability.
