Over the last few years TDWG has been active in the development of protocols and tools to allow users to search multiple databases across the Internet to find records of interest.

This has provided the foundations for a number of significant projects, including: MaNIS, OBIS and Species Analyst using the DiGIR protocol; the European BioCASE project using the BioCASe protocol; and GBIF building an index of specimen and observation records using both protocols.

Much has been learned from these projects. TDWG is now seeking an integrated approach that combines the strengths from both the DiGIR and BioCASe protocols. This new approach has been named TAPIR, and early implementations have been developed in the US and Germany.

A small workshop has been scheduled for November 7-11 to bring together the developers who are working on each of these two implementations. This meeting is to resolve any outstanding issues in the definition of the TAPIR protocol and to ensure that the implementations are fully compatible.

We are grateful to the Gordon and Betty Moore foundation for suporting this meeting, and to the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN) and the CSIC Computing Centre in Madrid for hosting it.

Further information can be obtained from Renato De Giovanni (renato@cria.org.br).