All posts tagged with tdwg

In October 2019, more than 700 people from over 75 countries gathered in Leiden, the Netherlands for Biodiversity_Next, a joint conference by GBIF, DISSCo, iDigBio, CETAF, TDWG, and LifeWatch Eric. Hosted by the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, a BHL Affiliate, in collaboration with the Netherlands Biodiversity Information Facility, the main conference ran from 22-25 October 2019, with pre-conference workshops occurring 20-21 October, as well as organization-specific meetings for GBIF, CETAF, and TDWG being held in conjunction with the conference. Eighteen BHL-affiliated representatives from our partner community, representing 13 institutions from nine countries, attended the conference, and 11 BHL-affiliated staff presented or moderated 16 talks or sessions. Dr. Elycia Wallis (Atlas of Living Australia; BHL Member representative for BHL Australia) served as a key member of the Programme Committee. Members of the BHL Executive Committee (EC) and colleagues from the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle represented BHL at the various organizational meetings, including GBIF, TDWG, and CETAF.

On 25 August – 1 September 2018, BHL representatives from around the world traveled to Dunedin, New Zealand to attend the joint Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) and Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) conference. Hosted by the Otago Museum and the University of Otago, the conference represented several firsts, including the first joint meeting of these two organizations plus the first SPNHC meeting in the Southern Hemisphere.

With the theme “Collections and Data in an Uncertain World”, the conference was an opportunity for bioinformatics and natural science collections professionals to exchange ideas and expertise as they explored the myriad intersections between collections and the data generated from them. BHL, an institutional member of TDWG, was proud to be a conference partner for this important event.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is an institutional member of TDWG. TDWG was formed to: “establish international collaboration among biological database projects. TDWG promoted the wider and more effective dissemination of information about the World’s heritage of biological organisms for the benefit of the world at large. Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) now focuses on the development of standards for the exchange of biological/biodiversity data.”

Dr. Patricia Mergen, Liaison Officer,  Legal Entity Appointed Representative (LEAR) at the European Commission, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, visited the BHL Secretariat and Smithsonian Libraries on 31 May 2014. Mergen was in Washington to attend the Catalogue of Life Workshop and  Symposium (2-4 June 2014). In discussions with Program Director Martin Kalfatovic and Program Manager Carolyn Sheffield, Mergen gave updates on activities of BHL Europe and upcoming European biodiversity initiatives, including the Horizon 2020 programme.