National Biological Information Infrastructure

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The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) is a program of the United States Geological Survey's Biological Informatics Office. Its purpose is to coordinate access to data and information on the biological resources of the United States, utilizing government agencies, academic institutions, non-government organizations, and private industry.

The NBII does two things. First, it coordinates the research output of the biological community into information systems that are easily accessed, by providing organization and structure and funneling money. The structure is essentially invisible to the end user of the information, but is vitally important to the administrators and grant writers.[1] The end-user aspect of the NBII is its Web portal which provides access to information, publications, and data from the various databases "in a seamless, unified portal."[1]

Contents

[edit] History

The NBII is an outgrowth of a 1993 National Research Council report intitled "A Biological Survey for the Nation"[2], which recommended that the United States Department of the Interior oversee the development of a National Biotic Resource Information System to coordinate information about biodiversity and ecosystems. The report found that such information was "vital to a wide range of scientific, educational, and government uses," but that, unfortunately, most of the information existed in forms that were not easily used. It envisioned a system of distributed databases designed to make the existing information more accessible. The report also suggested that new ways to collect and distribute data and information should be developed. It did mention networking, but not the Internet. .[3]

As a first step, in 1994, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12906, intitled "Coordinating Geographic Data Acquisition and Access: the National Spatial Data Infrastructure".[4] National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) deals with the acquisition, processing, storage, and distribution of geospatial (geographically referenced) data. In conjunction with this, but without a presidential order, Secretary Babbitt renamed the national biotic resource information system as the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). In 1996 the OMB OMB Circular A-130, the document which control the management of federal information resources in the United States, was amended to include the NBII.

Things did not move as quickly as the scientific community would have liked, and in 1998, the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology released a report "Teaming With Life: Investing in Science to Understand and Use America's Living Capital"[5] which urged that current information technology be applied to the management of science information, and reiterated the findings of the 1993 report. In 2001 money was finally appropriated for the development of the system of NBII network nodes.

In implementing this node-based system, the USGS is designing each node to focus on a narrowly defined scope (often geographic) or purpose.[6] For example, the Southwest Information Node focuses on desert ecosytems.[7]

[edit] International Initiatives

The NBII is involved with four international initiatives:

  1. "FishBase for the Americas: Improving Access to Western Hemisphere Fisheries" is a partnership of FishBase, the Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN) and the NBII Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (FAR) Node.
  2. "Pollinators Thematic Network: A Network for Pollinator Information and Expertise in the Western Hemisphere (PTN)" which is primarily an Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network initiative.
  3. "Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network"
  4. "Invasive Species Information Network for the Americas"

[edit] Reviews

Early on researchers found the NBII coordination less than expected. The NBII navigation buttons on the Invasive Species databases had confusing topic labels especially when compared with the National Agricultural Library labels. ."[8] The switching back and forth between the portal and the databases was "a tedious exercise indeed."[8] Nonetheless, the Federation of Government Information Processing Councils awarded the NBII a 2002 Award for Outstanding Intergovernmental Technology Solutions.[3]

End users may encounter problems when searching NBII databases. "A great deal of persistence may be required to find a particular database. Some valuable resources are found four or five layers into the site's hierarchy."[1] An example is FRAMES [9], the "Fire Research And Management Exchange System" portal to U.S.-based Internet resources on forest and wildland fires. Other problems include lists of resources that are hidden well down on the page, so that they don’t appear on the screen, and there are the occasional dead links. "[1]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Schiller, Nicholas (March 2007) "Internet Reviews: National Biological Information Infrastructure" College & Research Libraries News 68(3): p. 191
  2. ^ National Research Council (1993) A Biological Survey for the Nation National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, ISBN 0-309-04984-0
  3. ^ a b Sepic, Ron and Kase, Kate (2002) "The National Biological Information Infrastructure as an E-Government tool" Government Information Quarterly 19(4): pp. 407-24
  4. ^ "Coordinating Geographic Data Acquisition and Access: the National Spatial Data Infrastructure" Presidential Executive Order 12906 (April 11, 1994)
  5. ^ President’s Committee of Advisors for Science and Technology (March 1998) Teaming With Life: Investing in Science to Understand and Use America's Living Capital Office of Science and Technology Policy, Washington, DC, OCLC 38836916
  6. ^ "A Closer Look at the NBII and NBII Nodes" National Biological Information Infrastructure
  7. ^ Frame, Michael T. (2002) "Information Science and Technology Developments Within the National Biological Information Infrastructure" Science & Technology Libraries 23(4): p. 59
  8. ^ a b Case, Susan B. (February 2002) "Internet reviews: Invasivespecies.gov" College & Research Libraries News 63(2): p. 133
  9. ^ "Fire Research And Management Exchange System" National Biological Information Infrastructure

[edit] External links