[Taxacom] Goodbye NBII web site January 15

[Geoffrey Read]

Governments run on public donations too. Compulsory ones so that  services
of public good are provided.  Seven million must be a trivial sum in US
govt tax income terms, and it is somewhat disquieting to see this
organisation fail to persist, despite its very important-sounding title. 
Quote "As a result of the Program's termination, no single, integrated
point of access to federal and non-federal biological and biodiversity
information within the United States will exist."


Geoff

On Sat, January 7, 2012 1:22 pm, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> by contrast, Wikimedia had no difficulty again this year getting what $$$
> it needs to run from public donations ...
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Geoff Read <gread at actrix.gen.nz>
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Sent: Saturday, 7 January 2012 1:04 PM
> Subject: [Taxacom] Goodbye NBII web site January 15
>
> Greetings,
>
> A situation probably better known to USA members, but both of interest and
> less familiar to the rest of us. With one week to go before the USA
> National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) public face
> disappears, and associated web utilities such as the taxonomy database
> ITIS disperse elsewhere, and may or may not be harder to find and less
> well maintained, now might be a good time to read the FAQ sketching out
> what supposedly will happen.
>
> http://www.nbii.gov/portal/server.pt/community/termination_of_nbii_program/2057/termination_faqs/7650
>
> In FY2010, the NBII budget was $7 million, and now is zero in FY2012.