Nominations are invited for the course to be held from 8 to 10 February 2012, in Madrid, Spain.

The GBIF Secretariat is pleased to announce a new training opportunity for GBIF Participants: a course on Persistent Identifiers. This event will be organized in collaboration with GBIF Spain and will be held in Madrid, Spain from 8 to 10 February 2012.
 
GBIF has identified the provision of identifiers for biodiversity objects as one of the central challenges to developing a global bioinformatics infrastructure. One of the main recommendations of the Life Sciences Identifiers Global Unique Identifiers (LSID GUID) Task Group convened by GBIF, was to provide education and support for community members who are in the process of adopting Persistent Identifiers. This course aims at increasing the knowledge of the participants about Persistent Identifiers, specifically on how to issue, use, publish and resolve them, helping them to select the most appropriate solution for their specific situation.
 
This course is targeted at teams leading the development of biodiversity informatics tools that can potentially issue/use/resolve Persistent Identifiers, and at biodiversity data managers who are in a position to start implementing Persistent Identifiers in their work. The candidates are expected to have the technical background and language skills needed to fully benefit from the training.
 
The course will be held in English.
 
GBIF Node Managers (or Heads of GBIF Delegations if no Node Manager has been appointed) are kindly requested to nominate one suitable candidate at their earliest convenience and no later than 9 December 2011. The nomination must be sent by email to training_@If you can read this, please upgrade to a modern browser.gbif.org or by fax to (+45) 35321480 and must include the registration form, the CV of the candidate, any support letters and other relevant information.
 
Due to space constraints, a selection process will be held shortly after this date.
 
The events page will be updated with more information about the planned programme soon. Please consider candidates who will guarantee an adequate dissemination of the knowledge acquired back in your countries and organizations.
 
All the preparatory work related to the workshop will be done through the 'Persistent Identifiers interest group' in the GBIF Community Site. You are welcome to join us there if you are interested in participating in this collaborative effort.