During my visit at the Research Institute of Peruvian Amazonas (IIAP), in Iquitos, Peru, I have been invited to present AGROVOC and related work during the annual meeting of the latinamerican nodes of GBIF. This year the meeting was hosted by IIAP, and organized in Cuzco, only a 2.5 hour flight from Iquitos.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) (http://www.gbif.org), is aninternational organization that aims at facilitating free and open access to biodiversity data via the internet. GBIF was set up some 10 years ago and meanwhile has grown considerably, as it now counts a total number of 98 participants, of which 54 are country memebrs, while 44 are international organisation members.

GBIF provides its members facilities and fundings for data publications, and member countries contribute the GBIF portal with their relevant data. GBIF relevant data includes data about species, specimens, distributions and observations, much of the data published is georeferenced.

This meeting gathered together the representatives of most latinamerican nodes of GBIF: Costa Rica, Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Brasil. Uruguay and Argentina could not make it to the meeting. Some of these countries, such as Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Brasil, have large experience in publishing and sharing biodiversity data, with a history that predates GBIF. For example, some 90% of the data published by GBIF in the region are provided by Costa Rica and Mexico together.

According to an enquest made by GBIF, these are the top priorities of the actors in the region concerning informatic infrastructure:

1) standards and protocols

2) tools for developing data portals

3) tools for the geo-spatial analysis

4) tools for the analysis of biodiversity data

My presentation (http://www.slideshare.net/catecara/status-of-agrovoc-and-related-projects) was about AGROVOC, its applications, and the tools developed around it, including the WorkBench editing tool, and the semantic refinement of the thesaurus.

Participants have shown great interest in the topic presented: in particular, I received many questions on the use of AGROVOC for the organization of information, for example for structuring portals and for organizing data residing in databases. Many of the participants (eg. Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico) stated they would like to stay in touch with FAO about the development of AGROVOC, and its possible use in their organizations.

During the presentation, I also mentioned the upcoming work concerning the refinement of the Spanish AGROVOC, so as to accomodate terms relevant to the Amazon basin. This initiative was also looked at with great interest by the participants, as the Amazon rainforest covers an area embracing 9 Latinamerican countries and about 2/3 of the entire continent.

The interest araused during the GBIF meeting should have a prompt-follow up by FAO, as it can be the basis for the organization of a network of users of AGROVOC in the region. On the one hand, FAO would accomplish with its mandate of serving countries around the world in their needs of information gathering and sharing. On the other hand, such a network will contribute to the consolidation of FAO's resources as standard in the area, and will provide requirements for further work of the organization.

From a practical point of view, this is the perfect time for such an action, as already some 30 institutions are using AGROVOC in the region, mainly as part of their collaboration of the AGRIS network. Moreover, the AGROVOC WB editing tool is to be released in the coming weeks, and will enable interest actors to start actively contributing to the thesaurus.

Caterina Caracciolo