European Biological Resource CentreS Network
WorkShop
HERAKLION, CRETE, 16 October, 1400 - 1630

The EBRCN initiative
 Erko Stackebrandt, DSMZ, Braunschweig, Germany

With the termination of the EU-funded CABRI initiative and its public access, CABRI member collections considered it necessary to maintain the CABRI server and its mirrors in different countries. Based upon defined quality criteria, CABRI collections represent entities as described by the recent OECD initiative on Biological Resource Centres. Membership to CABRI is open to other collections provided they conform to these defined quality criteria, as assessed by a Technical Committee. 

EBRCN is supported by the EU and consists of ten collections, including several former CABRI members plus additional collections, not yet included in CABRI. As project funds are received from the EU under an agreed contract, it is not possible to expand the number of EBRCN members on the basis of this funding scheme. A system of adopting new members will be discussed within EBRCN. One of the main goals is to facilitate access to CABRI with its invaluable advantages by encouraging other collections to develop towards and implement CABRI quality criteria. CABRI and EBRCN must not be considered an elite club, but a necessity to be able to react towards international initiatives. Criteria and assessment instruments to be developed by the OECD and less developed countries will help national governments to assess the long-term sustainability of collections and will also lead to a global “virtual” Resource Centre (see GBIF and ENBI initiatives). EBRCN should be considered an instrument to represent European ideas on these issues and to facilitate the transfer of collections into Resource Centres. This will lead to a higher profile for collections and ultimately to long term funding and national recognition. 

Work Package 1
Establish a network, the European Biological Resource Centres Network (EBRCN) to co-ordinate European BRC policies, prepare a co-ordinated European response to international initiatives on biodiversity and become the European focal point for BRCs 
Erko Stackebrandt, DSMZ, Braunschweig, Germany
 
The main goal of the EBRCN initiative is to expand the network of European biological material as defined in the CABRI project, including initiatives to broaden the CABRI platform and to serve as a forum for dissemination and discussion of relevant policies. EBRCN will serve as the European focal point for Biological Resource Centres. An EBRCN services guide will be developed to facilitate the interoperability of content, services and expertise at the international and national level. Taking advantage of holding this first EBRCN workshop at an ECCO meeting, allows us to emphasise to curators of ECCO collections the difference between a Culture Collection of the traditional kind and a Biological Resource Centre as defined by the OECD in 2001. Without interfering with the goals of ECCO, emphasis is placed on the establishment of a web-based platform to co-ordinate European BRC policies and to facilitate communication between various types of collections with respect to international biodiversity initiatives. Future Workshops will expand the EBRCN concept and the European ideas of a BRC standard.

Work package 2
Develop new and maintain existing quality standards for European BRCs 
David Smith, CABI Bioscience UK Centre, Egham, UK

Objectives 
Develop the European Standard for BRCs based on existing collection quality management systems.

Methodology and study materials
The EBRCN will set a European Standard for BRCs.  It will work with existing guidelines and quality management systems currently in place and update these where required.  New procedures will be described and maintained as publicly available guidelines adding to those described in the Common Access to Biological Resource Information (CABRI) guidelines available at http://www.cabri.org/. There are other systems in operation for example the UK National Culture Collection (http://www.ukncc.co.uk) and individual collections have their own laboratory procedures or have adopted international certification such as ISO 9000.  There are initiatives being developed by others such as the World Federation for Culture Collections.  The EBRCN will draw on all these initiatives where possible.  The new guidelines and the European Standard will be externally refereed and made available on the central electronic contact point, the European ‘virtual’ BRC. 

The EBRCN requires a recognisable and accepted quality management system, the European Standard, to follow. This will address all essential elements of collection management setting minimum levels of quality control, enabling uniformity and reproducibility across European Collections. Information and procedures generated by other related projects will be considered.  Guidelines and protocols will be developed for organisms and cell lines that are not currently published e.g. nematodes and animal viruses.

Deliverables
A European Standard for BRCs

Milestones and criteria
Conversion of Collection Guidelines into the European Biological Resource Centres Standard – A standard that can be accepted by the European Community as the level for operation of all public service BRCs

Work Package 3
Establish a framework to maximise complementarity and minimise duplication among European BRCs  
Joost Stalpers, CBS, Utrecht, The Netherlands

I. Goal
To define and achieve optimal complementarity between European culture collections

II. Determine duplication of material and expertise 

A. Material 
We have the means to check duplicate material only within the CABRI collections. This is not considered a handicap, because CABRI includes the largest service collections, where duplication is expected to be the largest. Duplication in working collections (specialized, relatively small, intensively used non-public collections) is considered functional. Ideally, working collections should maintain only the material needed in the near future, and discard the rest. They must be certain that the discarded material is preserved in a high-quality service collection. CABRI/EBRCN should encourage this actively. Within CABRI databases, the effort should concentrate on reducing strain duplication, as duplication at the species level is contributing to the preservation of biodiversity. It is a matter of priority set within collections and institutes, and not considered to concern CABRI/EBRCN or the EC.

B. Expertise 
Quality is directly linked with the availability of expertise. Thus it is important to have an overview of the current expertise in the various collections. We will establish a list of focal points and specializations of all participating collections (research, services) and then produce an overview and an analysis of the current situation, including overlap and gaps.
	
III Inventory of possible candidates for CABRI/EBRCN

Working with WP1 and WP2, we will need to determine the kind of collections considered suitable for CABRI/EBRCN. Are there further limiting criteria on holdings besides quality and accessibility?
 
A. Inventory of possible candidates in countries with CABRI members

The first selection can be based on lists produced by earlier EU projects (e.g. BioCise) or national inventories. The first selection is to be made by the partner representing that country. Later questionnaires will expand the list and follow up on suitability of possible candidates.

B. Inventory of possible candidates in other EU or EU-associated countries

The plan will be similar to that in Section A, with the additional countries divided among WP3-participants. Collaboration will be sought with ECCO-associated collections. 

IV Deliverables
•	Inventory of European Collections expertise and holdings
•	A strategy for incorporation of living microbial collections and databases into the EBRCN
•	A package of new services for the market.

V Milestones and criteria
A report on a European strategy leading to complementarity between collections - accepted by EBRCN and other collection organizations and that could be extended globally.

Work Package 4
Introduce new techniques in information technology to the EBRCN to add value to current catalogue information and enhance accessibility 
Paolo Romano, National Cancer Research Institute, Genova, Italy

Objectives
Link catalogue data to literature, to nucleotide and to related genetic databases

Methodology
The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) and the European Molecular Biology Network (EMBnet) have shown how Europe can achieve a major international role by bringing together national services and expertise. The EBRCN will follow these moves by making an inventory of the data files partners have, how these are used, and what applications users would like to make of the information.

Partners’ catalogues, available through the CABRI services, will be maintained and improved. Where possible, links between partners’ catalogues and data files and external services will be made (e.g. to literature references, to nucleotide and to related genetic information) and contacts with external experts and centres will be maintained. The catalogue information, which is a basic resource, will also be offered for linking to other non-EBRCN services  so as to maximise the use of the data and eventually offer users access to a series of validated information resources. Limited, significant information will be extracted from catalogues and made available for downloading to interested public services.

Advanced data manipulation standards will be monitored, together with new network tools, to cope with the quickly evolving biology services.

Deliverables
•	Analysis of non-EBRCN databases and network services of interest to BRCs (May 2002)
•	Connecting partners’ catalogues to new information sources (May 2003)
•	Creation of extracted databases, to be released on a periodical basis (may 2003)
•	Inventory of BRC data usage and data sets available (may 2004)
•	An integrated Biological Resource database (may 2004)

Work package 5
Collate and disseminate relevant information to the BRCs. (e.g. compliance with legislation)  
David Smith, CABI Bioscience UK Centre, Egham, UK

Objectives
Provide an inventory of legislation governing the operations, activities and services of BRCs

Methodology and study materials
Legislation dealing with biological cultures and other resources is increasing.  Much of it is difficult to locate and is not connected to the resource it deals with.  EBRCN will make an inventory of the legislation, tie it to the national files and catalogues, and establish links between the legal papers and the relevant biological cultures and resources.  EBRCN will provide experts to analyse the data, to examine what can be best used, and to add  value to the basic information so it is of maximum use to the BRC world. The results and advice will be mounted on the EBRCN central electronic contact point.  Finally, the project will examine how specialist customers might receive processed data for their specific market areas (e.g. medical advances, biotechnology etc.).  

Deliverables
A legislation database relevant to BRCs

Milestones and criteria
Legislation data made available on the EBRCN web site – comprehensive coverage of the legislation that covers the collection, handling and distribution of living materials and their derivatives.

CABRI online, the place to be for Europe's quality assured biological material
Martine Vanhoucke, BCCM/LMBP Plasmid Collection, Ghent University, Belgium

CABRI, Common Access to Biological Resources and Information, is a public web-based catalogue and information service. Established as a Demonstration Project under the Fourth Framework Biotechnology Programme of the European Union, it is designed, implemented and maintained by a number of European Biological Resource and Information Centres. At present, it is the central electronic contact point of the EBRCN, the European Biological Resource Network project under the Fifth Framework programme 'Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources'.

The service offers world-wide access to the catalogues of the CABRI BRCs, currently covering archea, bacteria, phages, fungi, yeasts, cell lines (human, animal, plant) and hybridomas, plasmids, DNA probes and plant viruses. It allows the user to check on the availability of a particular item, interrogating one or more catalogues at the same time, and to order the required biological resources once located.

CABRI guarantees its users high quality products.  The biological resources and related information provided by the BRCs must meet the specifications defined in the CABRI quality control guidelines and the CABRI guidelines for catalogue production respectively. CABRI membership is open to any recognised European BRC, willing and able to work to the CABRI quality levels.

CABRI is currently available through the main site and three mirrors:

•	Main site: http://www.cabri.org/ 
•	Belgian mirror: http://www.be.cabri.org/ 
•	French mirror: http://www.fr.cabri.org/ 
•	Italian mirror: http://www.it.cabri.org/

A quick introduction to contents and searching capabilities of the CABRI Web site
Paolo Romano, National Cancer Research Institute, Genova, Italy

Introduction
The CABRI web site is one of the main achievements of the CABRI project, funded by the EU from 1996 to 1999. It is maintained at the Advanced Biotechnology Center of Genoa, Italy. At present, the CABRI web site, with its mirror sites, is a useful resource that can be used for:
•	Retrieving information about the CABRI project
•	Accessing CABRI Guidelines
•	Searching CABRI catalogues
•	Submitting pre-order requests
A description of the project and a list of member Biological Resource Centers can easily be reached from the home page. 

CABRI Guidelines
CABRI member collections provide customers with high standard services, including biological resources and information. These must meet the specifications laid down in the quality control guidelines and the guidelines for catalogue production. All guidelines are available in the web site. 
Quality Guidelines are subdivided into four parts:
Part 1: General guidelines for culture collections.
Part 2: Request and handling deposits.
Part 3: Maintenance of the deposits.
Part 4: Delivery to the customer. 
Part 1 provides a common view for all CABRI resources. Thereafter, information is provided at different levels of detail: basic core procedures common to all collections, specific protocols that provide basic information on standard techniques, and, finally, if relevant, detailed information on local procedures that might be unique to a collection.
Catalogue production guidelines aim to improve the similarity, in both structure and content, between CABRI catalogues, so that searches involving many catalogues are facilitated. They are subdivided into two main parts. The first part relates to the procedures for data input and authentication. It includes a description of all the information that is available in the CABRI catalogues, by specifying three distinct data sets. The Minimum Data Set (MDS) consists of mandatory information needed to identify a unique strain or cell line: strains for which this information is not available cannot be inserted into the catalogue. The Recommended Data Set (RDS) includes useful information for an improved description of the material, but is not always available. Strains can be listed in the catalogue if this is missing. The Full Data Set (FDS), provides all remaining information available for a strain or cell line. Each collection can have its own FDS.
The data input and authentication procedures specify a detailed textual description and the input process for each part of every data set. The input process can foresee the use of a special list of agreed values or vocabularies, and/or a predefined syntax for insertion of the data (e.g., for bibliography).
The second part of the catalogue production guidelines refers to the creation of a catalogue, in a way that is suitable for inclusion in the CABRI site, and in its subsequent submission.
CABRI guidelines also include an operative description of how it works. This document, the Procedures Manual, includes, among other information, an explanation of relationships between CABRI and the EBRCN project, and a description of the steps involved in joining CABRI.

CABRI catalogues
At present, the CABRI site contains 26 catalogues from European Biological Resource Centers, listing more than 86,000 strains and cell lines. Available resources are bacteria, archaea, yeasts, fungi, plasmids, DNA probes, human and animal cell lines, plant cells, viruses and phages. Searches are performed by using SRS, a well known search engine commonly used for integrating searches on molecular biology databases. Searches can be carried out through a simplified interface or by means of the standard SRS interface. The first step implies the selection of the catalogues that must be searched. There are no limitations for the number or typology of catalogues that can be searched together. However, results can vary significantly when catalogues having different materials are selected. Furthermore, special care is needed when searching by strain name, since all names are indexed as unique terms. In this case, the name must be included within double quotes so that it can be considered as a unique term by the search engine.
The simple interface is particularly useful for quick retrieval of strains for which either the collection number or the exact name are known. It also allows for a free text search on all the catalogues’ fields. Moreover, the simple interface allows for synonym-based searches : the searched name is first matched against a synonym database. If it appears that it is a synonym, then the correct name is added to the search and results will include strains matching both names.
The SRS standard interface includes two alternative query forms. Moreover, single indexes can be browsed and searched. The first query form includes four search fields, each of which can be used to specify search conditions on any field of the catalogue. The second form presents one search field for each catalogue field. This is especially useful when the information in the field can only have a predefined and limited number of values. The list of allowed values can then be shown in the proper field, thus simplifying the selection of one or more of them. In both cases, the user can specify how the search conditions must be combined (boolean AND, OR, NOT), which information must be returned for each of the matching strains and how many results must be returned for each results page.
Browsing of single indexes can be achieved in most cases by selecting the name of the catalogue of interest. The list of all the fields of the catalogue will then be presented. By selecting one of the fields, a form for searching the index will be shown. This method is particularly useful for a better understanding of the way indexes are created for the single catalogues’ fields. From the results of this search, related records can then be reached.
When searching by means of the SRS standard interface, the synonyms search is not available. Instead, all reference databases, including the one for synonyms, are available for separate searches.

Pre-order requests
After a fruitful search, results can be added to a personal “shopping cart”. This can be used to temporarily store collection numbers of strains and cell lines that are of interest to the researcher. This information is kept anonymous and can be used in following sessions. Information included in the shopping cart can easily be changed or removed. If desired, a pre-order request of the stored strains can be sent by e-mail (automatically from the CABRI server) or by fax (after printing the screen contents) to the involved collections. In this case, personal information is needed for establishing a direct contact between researcher and collection. Personal data are not stored on the web site, but on the personal computer where it can be kept for later use. Prices are also available on line.

Mirrors
CABRI is interested in setting up mirror sites distributed globally, so that CABRI catalogues can be made available to the widest possible audience, under the best possible conditions. This will improve regional accessibility and ensure that catalogues are always available to the scientific community.
Mirrors of the CABRI web site include a complete copy of the main site, without any exclusions and/or modifications, and are made available as “virtual hosts” within the “cabri.org” domain. They are updated daily or weekly. Mirrors can prepare and make available translations in their national languages, thus extending CABRI accessibility. 

References
CABRI web site: http://www.cabri.org/
French mirror: http://www.fr.cabri.org/
Belgian mirror: http://www.be.cabri.org/
Italian mirror: http://www.it.cabri.org/

Introduction to GBIF and ENBI
Dagmar Fritze, DSMZ, Braunschweig, Germany

GBIF - The Global Biodiversity Information Facility
GBIFs aims are to provide a global network of interlinked biodiversity databases, coordinated through a central secretariat and based on an implementing agreement (MOU) signed by governments of contracting countries. It was initiated through OECD efforts but now has an independent existence and is open to all countries. GBIF will work in close contact with existing and ongoing activities with similar or complementary goals on a national and international level. It became operational on 1st March 2001 and the present status is (October 2001):
•	Membership: 21 voting, 17 non-voting
•	Chair of the Governing Board: Ch. Häuser, Germany, Vice-Chair: K. Iwatsuki, Japan 
•	Host country for central Secretariat: Denmark
•	Executive Secretary: James Edwards, USA
Membership requires signature of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Associate participants must be prepared to share biodiversity data and to develop a computing gateway (node) for accessing such data. Voting members, in addition to sharing data and developing a GBIF node, must also be prepared to provide a financial contribution (amount according to a schedule). Co-ordination of activities between botanical, zoological and microbiological institutions of relevance will take place on a national level. For more information see www.gbif.org.

ENBI - The European Network of Biodiversity Information
On 20th February 2001, the European Commission published an Advance Notice of a joint targeted call to invite proposals for RTD projects with the purpose to establish a European Network of Biodiversity Information (ENBI). (Publication C 53/18 of 20.02.2001: http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/de/dat/2001/c_053/c_05320010220de00180018.pdf .
The call was published on 31 May: http://www.cordis.lu/life/calls/200101.htm . 
 
ENBI is expected to:
•	Complement the objectives of GBIF 
•	Develop a European approach, building upon Member State initiatives in the context of international research activities 
•	Add value to the contributions of the national nodes to GBIF 
•	Form an intermediate level between national GBIF activities and the international GBIF level, thus not duplicating their efforts

In summary, the functions of ENBI are to: 
•	Offer European researchers access to a European-wide pool of technical and human resources, expertise and know-how on biodiversity 
•	Provide a forum for GBIF-related discussions and decision-making on scientific issues that are better handled at a European scale 
•	Provide views of biodiversity and access to biodiversity data and information at the European bio-geographical scale (including marine biodiversity)
•	Facilitate and promote the repatriation of biodiversity data

Membership must conform to the following principles:
•	Open participation, allowing new members to join easily 
•	Applications may come from the European western palaearctic biogeographic region 
•	As geographically balanced as possible
•	GBIF national nodes strongly encouraged to participate
•	Relevant EU projects, as well European networks, should be included
•	Membership is not automatic, but depends on a decision in the network

A group of interested organizations from more than 16 countries, under the co-ordination of Prof. Wouter Los, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is currently preparing a joint proposal for the EU.

Report on OECD Initiative BRC and Follow-up Initiative
Nicole Henry, OSTC/BCCM, Brussels, Belgium

Abstract unavailable