Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to inform you of a couple of events run by SYNTHESYS+/GBIF,
and the TDWG collections descriptions group.

Online Event 1)  SYNTHESYS+ Advancing the Catalogue of the World's
Natural History Collections - lead by GBIF. runs from March till 29th
April, consists of webinaires, and online discussion consultancy
sessions.

The event encourages communities, projects and individuals with an
interest in natural science collections to contribute to a road-map of
unifying a catalogue of worlds natural science collections.

Here is a link to the 'ideas paper' explaining the event/project:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aoozm6MZtrg_lnn88xhqzcohoUgmD_TYBeFAUoD0KqI/edit#heading=h.rshewnw2ou8i

The webnaires have already happened - they explained the scope of the
roadmap and how the event will work. I can ask the coordinator for the
webnaire presentation.

Up until the 3/6th April - people can make contributions e.g. short
presentations, documents add topic areas to discuss and add to the paper
– they will put the presentations  on the online platform. register to
join the consultation community

They expressed the need for more involvement of the Earth Science
Community - so I think it would a good idea to contribute a short
presentation about Earth Science collections: the scope,  what metadata
is important, if there are any differences from biological collection
descriptions, and the challenges.

I will draft a presentation by the 30th March - and send it around for
input.

If you would like to contribute by adding more topics or questions for
the ideas paper you can do that as well.

Online Event 2) TDWG Collection Description task group BBQ on Collection
Description Terms

The TDWG CD group has arranged 2hour long workshops (they are calling
BBQs) basically so people can join in helping to improve the collection
description standards (improving terms, suggesting terms).

They said that they need more contribution from Earth Sciences – so I
will send around the details times and dates and help them focus on
areas.
I will forward the mail after this one.

Other Buisness:
Finally I have created a ‘Slack group’ this will help stop peoples email
inboxes getting full when we have online written discussions. This is
for CETAF members only - I will go through the mailing list and add
people.

I look forward to your replies and encourage you to provide input so
that Earth Sciences are well represented.

Thank you for your time

Best wishes

Laura