ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ways in which information is being assembled in species diversity databases and combined to build comprehensive sources of biodiversity knowledge. Much of the chapter is drawn from the author’s experiences with biodiversity data in various projects. The manual processes by which data were merged in early projects are discussed, progressing through projects in which interoperability has been achieved by linking heterogeneous databases with very specific kinds of use in mind to the present possibilities for more general systems. Although techniques for interoperation are becoming increasingly sophisticated, issues of data quality and differences of expert opinion arise that can no longer be dealt with entirely manually, and ways to address some of these issues are also discussed.
