A society aiming to make biodiversity data available for the benefit of science and environmental management.

The Society for the Management of Electronic Biodiversity Data (SMEBD) is a professional society of scientists, authors of biodiversity databases that are published on the internet, through collaborative initiatives such as Euro+Med Plantbase, FADA, Fauna Europaea, ERMS and WoRMS. Membership is free and open to all contributors to these initiatives.

SMEBD holds the copyright, intellectual property rights and, where appropriate, ownership of the contributing databases. It acts on behalf of its members to defend their interests, manage the databases and to provide a legal basis for their protection. It promotes the publication, dissemation and use of data and information, and development of new biodiversity data-related initiatives and projects.

The Society itself is governed by a Council elected by its members. The council appoints committees  that manage the data generated by SMEBD’s activities and selects the host institutes or publishers of the databases.

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SMEBD wishes to acknowledge funding from the European Commission through the EU FP7 research infrastructure project PESI: Pan-European Species directories Infrastructure.

News

In Memoriam Frank A Bisby (1945 - 2011) Added on: 2011-11-08 09:27:18 by Segers, Hendrik Dear Colleagues It's with great sadness that I must announce you of the recent and very unexpected demise of our colleague and treasurer Frank Bisby. Undoubtedly, Frank was one of the most influential persons active in our field, and he will be sorely missed. [Read more]

The European Species Portal (PESI) has been launched! Added on: 2011-05-10 09:36:27 by De Hauwere, Nathalie The portal of PESI (Pan-European Species directories Infrastructure) has been launched: www.eu-nomen.eu/portal and is available in 21 European languages. With time, it will be possible to find and search through the information of all species appearing in Europe. Not only the species living in seas and oceans, but also of all terrestrial and aquatic species. Currently, there are already nearly half a million scientific and non-scientific names in 88 languages for over 210 000 species and over 6 million distribution records. ... [Read more]

Showing readers what species look like Added on: 2010-12-10 10:30:00 by Appeltans, Ward The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and associated databases are an index to the book of life, but our further goal is for every species to have its face on the web. ... [Read more]

The Canadian Register of Marine Species is now available online Added on: 2010-11-23 17:24:15 by Kennedy, Mary CaRMS is one of the regional species registers in WoRMS, containing authoritative species distribution records for marine areas of interest to Canadian researchers and includes taxa found in three oceans: the Atlantic, the Arctic and the Pacific. ... [Read more]