All posts tagged with tdwg

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.

I was privileged to attend and present at the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) meeting. The theme for 2013 was “Virtual Communities for Biodiversity Science”, an apt theme for the global virtual Biodiversity Heritage Library. The venue was beautiful Florence, Italy and the weather was warm.

The Biodiversity Information Standards group, also known as TDWG, holds an annual conference every year in a different city around the globe. This year it was held in Florence Italy from October 28th 2013-November 1st 2013. It was my first opportunity to attend the TDWG conference. The conference theme was “virtual communities for biodiversity science” which spoke to me of the increasing opportunities in sharing and connecting biodiversity data via the semantic web environment. I particularly enjoyed the keynote talk by Eric Meyer of the Oxford Internet Institute where researchers study the social implications of the Internet from different domain perspectives.

Six members of the Global BHL community participated in the symposium, “Crafting the Future of a Global Biodiversity Heritage Library for Diverse Communities’ Needs” at the 2013 TDWG Conference in Florence, Italy. The symposium took place on 30 October 2013 and was attended by over 50 TDWG participants. A key portion of the symposium was the closing talk by Connie Rinaldo (Harvard/Museum of Comparative Zoology) which called for feedback on the BHL from the TDWG community.

The TDWG 2013 Annual Conference has kicked off in Florence, Italy and will run through November 1, 2013.