Global Seabird Researcher Directory

[Grant Humphries]

I would like to open discussions with the concept of creating a global
seabird researcher directory (GLOSRED? <- as scientists it's our DUTY
to give everything an acronym)

I envision this to be a place where anyone interested in, or involved
in, seabird research, can go online and search for information on
people and their research interests.

Each profile would contain information like:

Name
Occupation
Affiliation
Location
Research Interests (a list of 3?)
Species of interest (a list of 5?)
Field sites
Webpage link
email (Optional)

We could give people the option of posting emails, but would have to
implement a way of preventing "bots" (automated programs that find
emails for spamming), from stealing those addresses.

Shane and/or Rob would have a good idea on how long it would take to
set this up, and I'd like to hear their opinions on a timeframe.

I would like to know what other things you might think would be good
to include in a directory like this.

Cheers
GH

[Shane StClair (Axiom)]

We're currently not actively developing new seabirds.net components,
but we are paying attention to the conversations going on and
strategizing for the next phase. While a profile system like you've
described would be fairly easy to set up, we should fit it into a
large scale vision to be sure that we don't invest time and money into
a system that won't fit our needs in the near future.

Almost all of these fields (name, occupation, location, species,
spatial extent, email, link, etc) are captured in the current
seabirds.net metadata survey application. Currently researchers need
to request the login from David Irons, but this could be altered. I'd
suggest for now that we encourage people to submit their info to the
metadata application and participate in the Google Groups discussions;
the metadata contact info can be imported to a suitable profile system
in the future.

-Shane