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The signatories were in three locations: Reading, England, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Washington DC, USA. Nonetheless, they were in communication via a conference call, and each signed the document at the same time (GMT in England, GMT + 1 in Denmark, and GMT -5 in Washington).
Dr. Jim Edwards, Executive Secretary of GBIF, said of the occasion "This is an important milestone in developing a worldwide network of species and specimen level biodiversity information. One of GBIF's major goals is to make all species occurrence data digitally searchable and to do that, a complete electronic listing of all scientific names is needed. The Catalogue of Life partnership has been working for some time to achieve this goal. GBIF is proud to partner with the COL and hopes to promote rapid progress in their work."
Watching as Dr. Edwards signed on behalf of GBIF were Hugo von Linstow, Deputy Director of the Secretariat and Per de Place Bjørn, the GBIF Programme Officer for the thematic area Electronic Catalogue of Names of Known Organisms. Dr. Bjørn said, "It is exciting to be working with these groups of people, because not to do so would mean that GBIF itself would have to generate the listing, and it was specifically set up to avoid reinventing wheels."
Signing on behalf of the Catalogue of Life partner ITIS (a consortium among the USA, Canada and Mexico) was Dr. Michael Ruggiero of the US Geological Survey. In England, Dr. Frank Bisby signed on behalf of the global network of scientists that make up Species 2000. He was observed by the officials of the University of Reading and members of the Species 2000 Secretariat.
All parties to the agreement shared, albeit by long distance, a celebratory glass of champagne after the signing.
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