Netherlands provides major funding for digitisation project
The Netherlands is fulfilling Paragraph 3.3d of the GBIF MoU by making "...other investments in biodiversity information infrastructure in support of GBIF". A recent grant of €2.35 million to a consortium of natural history collections will enable digitisation of 1.5 million records.

GBIF Associate Participant IABIN Funded by GEF
The InterAmerican Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN) will receive US$6 million over the next five years from the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The World Bank's Board approved the "GEF Trust Fund Grant to the Organization of American States - Building the Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN)" on June 29th, 2004. The Project Implementation Plan that is the basis for this grant may be found at the IABIN web site.

Node newsletters
Several GBIF nodes have newsletters that can be read online. Links to these newsletters have been established on the GBIF Communications Portal. Click on "NODES" in the yellow bar at the top of the page. Within the list of nodes, "newsletter here" is listed after the name of the node. Clicking on that phrase will link to the resource. A link to this GBIF News newsletter (and subsequent issues) has been added to the communications portal, in the left-hand menu under Tools and Services.

Coming up: Ninth meeting of the Governing Board
The ninth meeting of the GBIF Governing Board will be hosted by New Zealand, and will take place from 3--8 October 2004. The GB9 registration site will appear on the communications portal in late July or early August. Prior to that time, you can consult the travel agent for the meeting regarding plans.

GBIF is Working! Part I: Sharing Data with Countries of Origin The mission of GBIF is to make the world's primary data on biodiversity freely and universally available via the Internet. A major function of this mission is to ensure that biodiversity data will be shared with the countries of origin of natural history specimens and tissue cultures that are held in the world's museums and culture collections.	GBIF is Working! Part II: Data Provider Software Enhanced in Global Collaboration Working together under the GBIF umbrella, several organisations have solved a problem in interoperable data provision rapidly and cooperatively.
Governing Board Meets for Eighth Time The eighth meeting of the GBIF Governing Board (GB8) took place on 26 April 2004 in Oaxaca, Mexico. This meeting focused on science issues pertinent to GBIF activities, and the Second Annual GBIF Science Symposium and the science planning meetings filled out the week.	2nd GBIF Science Symposium: Biodiversity Data Users Serving Science and Society The second annual GBIF Science Symposium focused on uses and users of biodiversity data, and served as the kickoff for the science planning meetings that followed.
2004 Ebbe Nielsen Prize The 2004 Ebbe Nielsen prize for innovative application of biodiversity informatics in biosystematics was awarded to Mr. Johan Nilsson of Sollentuna, Sweden, during the Second Annual GBIF Science Symposium in Oaxaca, Mexico.	GBIF Undergoing Independent Review “In the third year, an independent review of [GBIF’s] operations, financial mechanisms, legal basis, governance structure, and links to other organisations will be conducted to determine if any changes are needed. The lessons learned will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the governance structure and to recommend any necessary changes.” (GBIF MoU, Paragraph 11.2)

GBIF Demonstration Projects

Explore the results of the 2003 demonstration project GBIF commissioned the development of a demonstration about how GBIF-type data can be put to use by people in different walks of life.

Call for tenders for the 2004 demonstration project now open The call can be downloaded by clicking here. Only GBIF Participants or persons who live in Participating countries may submit proposals. Deadline is 30 July 2004. Questions related to the demo project should be sent to Beatriz Torres.

Articles and Documents of Interest

Reports from the GBIF Experts' Meeting on IPR Both the white paper commissioned by GBIF on IPR in preparation for the Experts' Meeting on biodiversity data, databases and property rights issues, and the final report on the meeting itself are available from the GBIF communications portal.	Data Sharing with Countries of Origin A report commissioned by GBIF and prepared by CRIA is now available. It presents the experiences of primarily developed-world institutions in the process of sharing data with countries of origin of specimens the institutions house.
GBIF featured in June, 2004 BioScience Written by Jim Edwards, the article discusses various recent articles that both question and extol the virtues of digitised specimen data.	Introductions to biodiversity informatics Geospatial-online.com has published two articles of interest to the GBIF biodiversity informatics community, and those who want to learn more about biodiversity informatics.

Meetings

Taxonomic Databases Working Group 2004: Description, Observation and Imaging Christchurch, New Zealand, 11--18 October.

The emerging global biodiversity information infrastructure Symposium in the 22nd International Congress of Entomology "Strength in diversity". This is a full-day symposium with about 8 invited speakers and equal number of voluntary speakers through the regular call for papers. Deadline for call for papers is 31 March 2004.

GBIF News will be issued on an approximately quarterly basis by the Secretariat.