1. Atlas of Living Australia Sharing Biodiversity Knowledge
Miles Nicholls (Data Manager) –
Miles Nicholls – Data Manager
Establish the ALA licensing framework
Talk to people and ask them to share their information
Also transforming and loading data
The Atlas is funded by the Australian Government under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and further supported by the Super Science Initiative of the Education Investment Fund

2. Atlas of Living Australia
Australian Government funding to June 2012
NCRIS : $8.2M
EIF Super Science : $30.0M
ALA partner in-kind contributions: $26.5
Partners
Australian Government – CSIRO is the lead agency
Natural History Collections
Universities
Community
Mission
To develop an authoritative, freely accessible, distributed and federated biodiversity data management system
In other words…to share biodiversity knowledge
Intro to the ALA project
The Atlas of Living Australia - “Sharing biodiversity knowledge”
Funding and governance…
Partners:
CSIRO is the lead agency,
Museums,
Herbaria,
Australian Government
Several universities
The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) is a national initiative between the CSIRO, over sixty museums, herbaria and other biological collections, the Australian Government and the community 2

3. Atlas of Living Australia
What the ALA does
The Atlas is an infrastructure project
The ALA does not create raw data we provide the infrastructure for others to share the data they create
We collect metadata about resources to make them discoverable
We provide tools to facilitate collection, discovery, access and analysis
Integrated picture of Australia’s biodiversity
Plants, animals and microorganisms
Marine and terrestrial
Native and non-native 3

4. Atlas of Living Australia
Information types
<Tassie devil page:
text,
records
links,
images,
movies,
Literature – go to BHL
taxonomy,
names
<search for ANWC, records, record type – sound, second record

5. Atlas of Living Australia
Variety of information types
Data and data sets
Multimedia
Text
Resources and references
Variety of contributor groups
Large government and non-government organisations
Commercial and non-commercial interests
Individuals 5

6. The Atlas and CC What does the Atlas need from a licensing framework?
Applicable to the types of information we deal with
Allow distribution, use and the creation of derivatives
The flexibility to suit different circumstances applicable to different types of organisations and individuals
As easy as possible to understand
Something the community is or could become comfortable with
The ALA doesn’t’ claim any IP over the information we share
We are an infrastructure project to facilitate sharing
To share the information, not just allow the ALA to use it, but to allow everyone to use it

7. The Atlas and CC ALA Data Provider Agreement
Allows the selection of a CC license to set the terms of use associated with a resource
The remainder of the document is in the nature of a relationship agreement outlining reciprocal rights and responsibilities
Not required, a CC license on the work is fine
We do have a few custom licenses
Try to encourage a move to a CC license over time
On-line contribution
Images and datasets – not individual sightings
Web form to select CC options

8. The Atlas and CC Notes on particular license terms
The ALA is an initiative to facilitate reuse so we don’t support No Derivatives licenses
We do support Non Commercial but try to encourage CC-BY
The issue with non commercial is in the cost of legal advice to determine whether a particular use is non-commercial. The smaller non-profit and volunteer organisations are the ones that benefit most from open access but they are also where this question is most difficult to answer and so need legal advice. Releasing something under a non-commercial license creates a barrier to non-commercial use.
Other open access:
The Data Provider Agreement is available under a CC-BY license
The ALA code is open source
ALA website content not provided by others is available under a CC-BY license 8

9. The Atlas of Living Australia Participants
The Council of Heads of Australian Faunal Collections (CHAFC)
The Council of Heads of Australian Entomological Collections (CHAEC)
The Council of Heads of Australasian Collections of Microorganisms (CHACM)
The Council of Australasian Museum Directors (CAMD)
The Atlas is funded by the Australian Government under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and further supported by the Super Science Initiative of the Education Investment Fund 9

10. Miles Nicholls (Data Manager) – miles.nicholls@csiro.au
Thank you
Miles Nicholls (Data Manager) – 10