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The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) prototype internet data portal www.gbif.net now provides free and universal access to millions of scientific data records about plants, animals and micro-organisms, as well as the ability to map their distributions, search them by scientific or common name, or browse through them by taxonomy. These data will be of great value to a wide range of users, including scientists, students, policymakers, and the general public.
The data portal service was launched with 29 specimen-data and 20 name-data providers associated with 14 GBIF participants. On 9 Feb 2004, there were 8.6 million natural history collection records and over 600,000 names accessible through the portal. Now, on 7 May, there are almost 21 million specimen records available from 53 providers in 19 participating countries and 4 organisational associates. This is still only a small fraction of the estimated 2 billion biodiversity specimens in museum collections and in databases of observational records. However, GBIF tools, services, and standards now open the way for making large parts of this information available on-line in the foreseeable future. It is expected that the amount of information available through the GBIF portal will grow significantly within the next few months.
GBIF will be working with holders of natural history specimens and datasets to make it as easy to share data as possible. Data providers can easily join the network by using free software provided and supported by GBIF. See Become a data provider for information. The data remain with the institutions that assemble the data; GBIF does not claim ownership of any of the data.
GBIF's eventual goal is to provide easy-to-use search engines that will access all kinds of biodiversity data, from genes to species to ecosystems. It has started by focusing on species-occurrence data based on collections and observations of the world’s plants, animals and micro-organisms. These data are provided by the natural history museums, herbaria, botanical gardens, bird-banding societies, culture collections and other such institutions that house the specimens and maintain the data sets.
The GBIF network makes it possible for users to search the data of many providers at once. Soon, it will be interlinked with several other networks, all of which will be searchable via GBIF.
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