10 – 12th November 2000

Secretary’s Report

1999 Meeting:

The 1999 Meeting was held at Harvard Herbarium, Cambridge, USA on 29th - 31st October, 1999. Just over 70 people met to discuss many issues important to taxonomic databases, such as sharing data and the development of standards to enable data transfer. One of the main areas of discussion was the standards process itself , and where TDWG fits in. The meeting agreed that TDWG should work closely with other organizations with similar aims, such as CODATA and GBIF.

Cooperation:

To meet this recommendation for closer cooperation, the TDWG Executive made contact with both CODATA and GBIF. As a result of communication with CODATA, they are co-sponsoring the 2000 meeting in Frankfurt. Discussions with GBIF led to a request by Dr. Jim Edwards, the chairperson of the Interim Steering Committee, for a contribution to a paper on the “Relationships of GBIF to Other International Organizations with Similar Goals” which has since been mounted on their web site – see http://www.gbif.org/relafram.htm for details.

IUBS:

The 27th General Assembly of the International Union of Biological Sciences will take place on 8-12 November 2000 in Naples, Italy. This coincides with the 2000 TDWG meeting, but TDWG (affiliated to IUBS as the Commission on Taxonomic Databases) is being represented by Karen Wilson from Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. She is an IUBS Executive Committee member, and has regularly attended TDWG meetings. A report on the activities of TDWG since the last General Assembly in 1997 was submitted in May - see http://www.tdwg.org/tdwg2000/Iubs.htm

Communications:

The TDWG web site, now at url http://www.tdwg.org has been updated and expanded. It contains much information on the organization, its work and relationships. There are reports on subgroup activity, and minutes of the meetings of 1998 and 1999. It is regularly accessed - for example, in the month of October, there were 2100 sessions.

Newsletter No. 10 was released in June, and was also published on the web site. In addition to news about the TDWG standards and projects, there were articles on BioCISE, IPNI and the “Automatic compilation of accurate taxonomic databases from multiple non-computerised sources”.

Subgroups and Standards:

The 2^nd edition of the TDWG standard is about to be published, thanks to the efforts of Dick Brummitt (despite his retirement as chairman of the geography subgroup last year!), and Paco Pando.

Georgina MacKenzie

TDWG Secretary

8^th November, 2000