Catalogue of Life mini-symposium

During the Catalogue of Life mini-symposium, the different aspects of the Catalogue of Life were presented. An overview of the history of the Catalogue of Life (CoL) was given, including its current position. Several users and data providers – e.g. the Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment (FADA), WoRMS, the Herpetology database of the Royal Museum of Central Africa, FishBase and the plant specimen database of the Botanical Garden Meise - talked about their experiences with and contributions to the Catalogue, providing valuable feedback to the Global Team on how the interactions with the Catalogue could be improved. During the second part of the symposium, 4 major initiatives – Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), the Global Biodiversity Information System (GBIF), the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and CoL itself – gave an overview of their history and future plans, with specific attention to how these initiatives could work together to improve the quality of the offered data and to avoid duplication of efforts, taking into account all the other existing initiatives such as e.g. The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) and the European LifeWatch initiative.