Biodiversity Collections Index

Contributing

BCI is a community-driven, open-access initiative. The long-term success of the project depends on your contribution in one or more of the ways detailed below:

Using BCI Identifiers

The most significant thing you can do to promote BCI is use BCI GUIDs in your work. There is a page that describes how to do this.

Adding and Improving Data

You can only use BCI GUIDs if BCI contains entries for the collections you wish to reference and the data in those entries is accurate. You are free to login, add and correct data on collections at any time. There are details of how to do this on the help pages. Correcting data for collections you have knowledge of helps others even if you aren't going to quote the GUIDs for those collections in your own work.

You may consider taking on responsibility for a subject domain or geographic region. If you would like to help by doing this please contact admin@BiodiversityCollectionsIndex.org so that we can coordinate activity and promote linkages to the work of national and international groups, particularly GBIF.

Community Discussion and Support

A Google Group has been set up to support community discussion of BCI, what it does and why. This is an open group that anyone can join and contribute. You don't have to join the group to read the discussions that take place there.

If you have any ideas, concerns or general feedback please make them on the Google Group. This group should be your first place of contact if you have questions that aren't answered on the BCI site directly.

[Note that the Google Group is only for discussion of the BCI system. Matters concerning the Natural Collections Descriptions (NCD) data standard should make use of the facilities provided by TDWG.]

Institutional and Project Support

If your project or institution makes use of BCI or would like to encourage its development please consider becoming a Supporting Organisation or Contributing Supporter. This may involve as little as granting the use of your name and logo or extend to materially contributing to the systems upkeep. If you need BCI to do something extra to support your project please let us know. We are keen to support the needs of the community and to try to address requirements. Read more on the supporters page.

Matters of Concern

If you have urgent matters of concern (such as reporting abuse of the system of major errors) please email admin@BiodiversityCollectionsIndex.org.

System Status

This web site is currently in the beta phase of development. It should be fully functional but there may be minor issues. Please report problems to the administrator.