Preprints of the Metadiversity Conference Proceedings

  Preface

Background on "Metadiversity"

RICHARD T. KASER, NFAIS Executive Director, Principal Investigator Metadiversity

"Metadiversity" was an interdisciplinary symposium jointly organized and held by the National Federation of Abstracting & Information Services and the Biological Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey, November 9-12, 1998, at Natural Bridge, Virginia.

Statement of Purpose
The purpose of this symposium was: "To respond to the national and international grand challenges in the area of biodiversity information management, to help define, contribute, support, and enhance the biodiversity research mission and metadata agenda and build an information infrastructure to support scientific advances."

Participants
The three-day symposium was attended by 82 representatives from government agencies, academic institutions, not-for-profit non-governmental organizations, associations, national laboratories, funding agencies, and commercial firms from the U.S. and abroad.

Agencies, organizations, and institutions represented at the symposium included:

Program
The Metadiversity program consisted of six formal sessions, each followed by interactive question-and-answer periods. The six sessions were designed to provide all attendees with exposure to the wide range of work being conducted in the area of metadata for biodiversity information management:

1. The Nation's Call to Action, which featured speakers from the international Convention on Biological Diversity, the President's Committee of Advisors on Science & Technology's Committee on Biodiversity and Ecosystems, and the National Biological Information Infrastructure. The session reviewed the PCAST Report Teaming with Life, the Convention on Biological Diversity's Clearing-House Mechanism, and the NBII Framework Plan. Participants also received an overview of metadata initiatives from OCLC.
    
2. The Challenge in Species Discovery & Taxonomic Information, which featured representatives from organizations sponsoring initiatives in the area, including the Species 2000 project, the All-Taxa Biodiversity Inventory, the Integrated Taxonomic Information System, and the American Society of Plant Taxonomists.
    

3. The Challenge in Earth Observation, Ecosystem Monitoring, and Environmental Information, which featured speakers from CIESIN, NASA, USGS, EPA, and European Environmental Agency.
     

4. Building the Infrastructure, which featured presentations by representatives of the National Biological Information Infrastructure, the Federal Geographic Data Committee, and the National Science Foundation's Digital Libraries Initiative.
    
5. The Metadata Challenge for Libraries, which featured presentations by the Coalition for Networked Information, UKOLN, the Alexandria Digital Library, and Cornell University.
     
6. The Metadata Challenge for Museums, which featured presentations by the University of Kansas, the University of New Orleans, and the Natural History Museum of London.

These six sessions were designed to highlight the wide range of fields involved in biodiversity information management and the great number of metadata initiatives taking place throughout the world.

Session 7: Facilitated Discussions
On the final day of the symposium, participants were broken out into working groups to consider the implications of what they had heard in the formal program and to develop recommendations in the form of a call to action.

The topics the participants chose to discuss in these groups were:

1. Leadership & Consensus Building, including national vs. global issues, organizational framework (infrastructural issues), interconnection of efforts (across domains, disciplines, and organization types), and how to achieve support from individual organizations (including ones own organization) and related communities.
    
2. Technology, including how to establish priorities, how to assure distributed but interoperable systems, how to handle data archiving and assure long-term data access, and data security.
    
3. Standards for Biodiversity Data, including taxonomy (controlled vocabulary), thesauri, models, and tools. This group also touched on the larger issues of how to involve professional communities in developing interoperable systems.
    
4. Funding & Economics, including funding strategies, developing incentives and rewards, business models, test beds, and business plans.
    
5. Users, including identification of user groups, their requirements, standards, privacy issues, etc.

Each group presented its recommendations before the meeting was adjourned.

Conclusions

"Metadiversity" was conceived as an event that would draw together members of a large and diverse community to discuss matters of mutual importance.

At this point, I can do no better in summarizing what took place at Natural Bridge than to repeat the words of my opening and closing comments.

It was not the intent of NFAIS, as conference organizer, to dictate the decisions of this group, but merely to create a forum and bring the group together.

However, it was difficult to bring this group together. We identified and invited representatives from 200 different organizations, involved in many different, but related, efforts-and these 200 are only the tip of the iceberg. It was difficult to convince some sectors that they should participate, and as a result, some sectors ended up not being represented at all. Those who attended, however, are the ones who saw the need. They came to participate, and participate they did–not only during the formal and interactive sessions, but also on the side during dinners, receptions, and nature outings.

I observe that due to the extent and breadth of the subject matter related to biodiversity, the "biodiversity community" is a community that is not fully aware that it is a community. As a result, there are a lot of different organizations working on the same problem. One conclusion would seem to be that the answer lies in distributed systems that are yet interoperable. But this cannot happen without community-building and cooperation.

At least one of the working groups called for NFAIS to sponsor a follow-on event to continue the discussion.

I continue to observe a vast gulf between and among mission-oriented organizations. Biodiversity information management needs to draw in organizations that have, as their primary mission, charters that do not specifically include biodiversity. Yet, of all subjects, biodiversity would seem to have the potential to be a great integrator–a field that could draw together many different interests and result in a common, interoperable information system. However, I also observe, among those participating in this group, a lack of incentive to do so.

If I could be so bold as to conclude one thing from this symposium, it would have to be that Metadiversity's "call for action" was, in fact, a call for community . . . and for community-building. Before the National Biological Information Infrastructure can be built, there must be a consensus that it needs to be built. The various communities that need to be a part, must buy off on this fact. Another way of saying this is that as a first step, the community must recognize itself.

One of the participants at Metadiversity, Linda Hill from the Alexandria Digital Library Project, observed:

"During and after the meeting, I kept trying to think about how to characterize the "biodiversity community," like identifying the significant professional associations, journals, conferences, etc., that are associated with the group. But I finally decided that "biodiversity" is like "global climate change" in that it is an umbrella concept that links various communities together toward a particular focus. So, for what it is worth, I think BRD might think in terms of establishing a program like that for global climate change. . . ."

I closed the symposium with the following remarks, which I still believe constitute the bottom line:

Three things happened at Natural Bridge:

1. We put on a program to inform you.
    
2. We have produced a tangible result–these proceedings.
    
3. But, most importantly, I sense, hope, and feel that what actually happened at Natural Bridge is that a dialogue began.

It is the dialogue that at this point needs to continue.

– Dick Kaser

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