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About Greg Whitbread

Architect and manager of the Integrated Botanical Information System (IBIS) at the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) and the Australian National Herbarium (CANB).

IBIS provides the infrastructure, applications and services supporting biodiversity informatics for the ANBG, CANB and their partnership with CSIRO Plant Industry, the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research (CPBR). IBIS incorporates systems for the integration, retrieval and disemination of biodiversity information; collections management (ALIVE, ANHSIR, NPPI); digital asset management; nomenclatural and taxonomic indices (APNI, APC); information delivery (www.anbg|cpbr.gov.au); web services (flora-online) and; federated database support (AVH, IPNI, GBIF).

Greg takes an active role in the the development of national and international standards and protocols for data interchange and database interoperability; contributing as a member of the Australian Herbarium Systems Committee (HISCOM), a position on the Atlas of Living Australa (ALA) scoping committee, and participation within Bidiversity Information Standards (TDWG) and its acivity groups (TAG, ABCD & TCS).

Currently chair of HISCOM (Herbarium Information Systems Committee) he was also a participant at the GBIF, ECAT & DADI STAGs and a past vice chairman of DADI working group. Information architect and development manager of the Australian Plant Name Index (APNI) , the Australian National Herbarium Specimen Information Register (ANHSIR), the Australian Plant Census (APC & WIN) and the CPBR and ANBG biodiversity informatics web presence; a senior member of the design and implementation teams responsible for the International Plant Name Index (IPNI) and Australia's Virtual Herbarium (AVH) and a member of the Dept. of Environment and Heritage (DEH) Species Subcommittee.

He shares GBIF's vision of a distributed yet transparent global facility providing for the free availability, and interchange, of primary biodiversity information resources presenting as a truely international enterprise - the utimate market place for biodiversity information - and has been working toward this ideal for two decades. HISPID, the first biodiversity interchange standard, resulted from our HISCOM colloborations and made AVH possible. At the end of 1992 the Australian National Herbarium Information Register was the the first biodiversity dataset available on the internet and in March 1993 the first deployed using the world wide web (WWW) and the first freely available in TDWG standard format (HISPID).

Contact details:

Greg Whitbread
Australian National Botanic Gardens
G.P.O. Box 1777
Canberra
ACT 2601
Australia

Email: ghw@anbg.gov.au
Phone: +61-2-62509482
Mobile:+61-418-670-369
Fax: +61-2-62509599