Germany is one of the founder members of GBIF and a major provider of biodiversity information, such as observational, collection and multimedia data. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has now decided to invest 4.2 million Euro into the German GBIF node system.

The BMBF funding includes investments in technical data infrastructure and a three-year project (2011–2013) to promote both technical development and extension of the German GBIF network (www.gbif.de). The project called  “Centres of Excellence of Innovative Data Mobilisation” is executed by the institutions coordinating the eight German GBIF nodes:

• Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Freie Universität Berlin (Project Coordination: Botany, Algae and Protists),
• Bavarian Natural History Collections, Munich (Mycology; Evertebrata II), 
• DSMZ – German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, Braunschweig (Prokaryota),
• Museum für Naturkunde – Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity at the Humboldt University Berlin (Insecta; Palaeontology), 
• Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, Frankfurt a. M. (Evertebrata III, marine collection data),
• Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig, Leibniz-Institut für Biodiversität der Tiere, Bonn (Vertebrata).

The specific objectives of this project are to further digitisation and mobilisation of biodiversity data from collections and observation projects, the standardisation and quality improvement of biodiversity data such as multimedia data, and collaborating to build and emend the global names architecture.

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