This discussion forum has been set up to discuss ideas on how Australian collections of microorganisms can contribute to the outcomes of the Atlas of Living Australia project http://www.ala.org.au/ and in doing so leave a long-lasting legacy for the future.

 AMRRN is a collaborator in the Atlas of Living Australia project. The project is funded under the Australian Government's National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) and its mission is to develop a biodiversity data management system which will link Australia’s biological knowledge with its scientific reference collections and other custodians of biological information. The aim of the project is to establish an electronic platform for the future to integrate the information on biological material held in Australia’s animal, plant, and microbial collections in museums, herbaria, universities, government, and research institutions. The ability to share information in Australia’s microbial collections is not well advanced compared with animal and plant collections. The newly formed Council of Heads of Australian Collections of Microorganisms (CHACM) will steer the collaboration of Australian collections and their contribution to the ALA project.

In my view the major contribution we can make to the ALA project outcomes is the databasing of all CHACM member collections and to provide this information to users via a common ALA portal. This of course is a grand aim and may not be achievable in the time frame. However, we could focus initially on a subset of cultures such as those cultures of importance in the Biosecurity of Australia’s animals, plants, and environment. Such a project would provide a proof of concept. Other discussion threads will address issues about databases, software, and user needs which underpin this project.

 The ALA project is a great concept and one that AMRRN endorses and has been trying to achieve for Australian microbial collections since we came together in 2004. However, there are still some impediments. Even when we agree on the structure of the network, data base standards, database software etc, there is an impediment which we need to be overcome, and that is that NCRIS will only fund up to the collection wall in this project. This means that the cost of servers, software and data entry within collections has to be met by the collections themselves, or we have to find alternate sources of funds. However, if I understand correctly, money can be spent on linking existing databases which meet appropriate standards, and help can be provided to transfer data from old systems into new databases. New web based software with a partitioned database on an external server may be a way forward which avoids this impediment and we need to explore this further.

Lindsay Sly