9628764 Krishtalka Currently, there is no single institution, agency, society or group with the mission to assist biological collections with the task of making biodiversity information freely and seamlessly available to science and society. this mission will require technical expertise, political leadership and scientific vision, but particularly the determination and will for the community to undertake this effort together. The compelling need for such a national biodiversity information enterprise has been established in numerous national and international reports. The purpose of this workshop award is to hold a planning and development meeting for the biological collections based community and related disciplines. IN an earlier workshop, the group proposed the establishment of the US Organization for Biodiversity Information with the following mission statement, "Create or enhance the infrastructure and tools necessary to organize information derived from biological collections and associated biodiversity enterprises into a maximally accessible form to meet the needs of society and science." Funding for this award will allow participants to consider the promise of such a community-based organization to achieve this mission, the changing nature of information, the technologically powerful solutions that can unite the community's vast biodiversity information and link it with other disciplines, and the issues and protocols of such an organizations structure, function, and funding. This workshop is important for the development of the US-OBI goals, as well as the eventual effort to make accessible the vast quantity of information in the world's specimen based collections. In addition, this effort is important to gather a broad based, community endorsement of the goals of US-OBI.
