GBIF STANDARD EMAIL LISTS

Background

CIRCA has a built-in mailing list functionality which is described in help files . Below a quick introduction to these functions is given and their implementation at GBIF is described.

In general, there are three types of mailing lists:

Lists that only contain the officially appointed members of committees. These have the token "roles" in their email domain, and the role name in front of email. Example is gbif-dadi@roles.circa.gbif.net . More details on roles is given below .
Lists that are built into the interest groups. Interest groups can have roles as members, so they include the above, but they can also include other people who have been admitted to the interest group such as Secretariat staff and people who have attended STAG meetings. These lists have the token "ig" in their email domain and in the front the <optional access class>.<ig>.<instance> names. Example is leader.dadi.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net .
Ad hoc lists created for the purpose of reviewing a particular document or for any other purpose. These are also in the "ig" domain.

Archiving of lists of type 2 and 3 happens automatically in the interest group newsgroup service. Type 1 lists that are not directly connected to interest groups are not automatically archived.

Only registered users can send to these mailing lists. Messages from those email accounts that are not listed in CIRCA directory service will be silently dropped. However, one does not have to be member of particular interest group or role to do send email to the lists.

In addition to the above mailing list functions, there is an embedded automatic email notification service. Any user can set notifications for him/herself in library and newsgroups so that any new material that is uploaded will generate a message. Interest group leaders can set their members to notification.

In general, GBIF network services are provided under the domain gbif.net , whereas services of and for the GBIF Secretariat are available from gbif.org.

Available GBIF network mailing lists

The following interest groups have been set up at http://circa.gbif.net/gbif/. For every interest group there is a corresponding email address that should be used for communication to the committee mentioned and other people that have been included as interest group members.

Name	Description with link to mailing list archive	Availability	Email address
GB	Governing Board	Members only	`gb.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net`
EC	Executive Committee	Members only	`ec.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net`
BC	Budget Committee	Members only	`bc.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net`
SC	Science Committee	Members only	`sc.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net`
Archive	Archive area of the Secretariat	Members only	`archive.archive.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net`
NODES	Participant Node Managers Committee	Public after registration	`nodes.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net`
DADI	Data standards and data interoperability	Public	`dadi.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net`
DIGIT	Digitalisation of biodiversity data	Public	`digit.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net`
ECAT	Electronic catalogue of names of known organisms	Public	`ecat.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net`
OCB	Outreach and capacity building	Public	`ocb.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net`
ICT	IT helpdesk and documentation	Public	`bug.ict.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net` , `helpdesk.ict.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net`

So, as a general rule, only using of mailing lists in the "ig" domain is recommended.

Official announcements that shall go to the designated members of a particular committee only, but not to entire interst group could be sent to the "roles" address. See information about roles below. However, in order to archive automatically these messages, a special access class with the name "representative" has been set up for the above interest groups. Hence, official announcements are sent, for instance, to representative.nodes.gbif@ig.circa.gbif.net.

Available GBIF staff mailing lists

GBIF Secretariat uses the email server of the Zoological Museum of the University of Copenhagen. GBIF accounts there are under the domain gbif.org. The following mailing lists are available in that environment.

Name	Description	Email address
GBIF Secretariat	Director and the Lead Secretary (for action)	`gbif@gbif.org`
GBIF	All GBIF Secretariat staff (for info)	`staff@gbif.org`
GBIF Webmaster	Webmaster (for action), Network and Database Administrator (for info), Secretary of IT Department (for info), Liaison Officer for Public Relations (for info), Deputy Director for Informatics (for info)	`webmaster@gbif.org`
GBIF Hostmaster	Network and Database Administrator (for action), Webmaster (for info), Programme Officer for Database Access and Data Interoperability (for info), Deputy Director for Informatics (for info)	`hostmaster@gbif.org`
Helpdesk	Assistance in the use of GBIF information and communication technologies	`helpdesk@gbif.org helpdesk@gbif.net`

About roles

Roles are an important construction in CIRCA directory services that allow grouping of users and organisations. Roles work outside interest groups and can be used to allow access to them. When a person is added or removed from a role, his/her access to many interest groups changes in one go. Each role has an email address.

Roles are used to keep track of who is who in the GBIF network. What roles exist and who is occupying them can be browsed from the site directory . Roles are hierarchically arranged, using dashes "-" as separators. The convention to use there hierarchies is as follows:

Network-Function-Topic-Country-Rank

Roles do not have to be complete to the 5th level. They can be queried using wildcards. Examples:

gbif-gb       (GBIF Network - Governing Board)
gbif-gb-vp-fi-1 (GBIF Network - Governing Board - Voting Participant - Finland - Head of
                                Delegation)
gbif-dadi           (GBIF Network - DADI Subcommittee)
gbif-*-*-fi    (All Finnish occupants of GBIF roles)

Emails are spawned to lower levels of the tree hierarchy. So, sending to gbif-gb-vp-fi sends to all Finnish members in various rank positions and to gbif-gb sends to all categories of members and countries in the underlying tree. Indeed, gbif@roles.circa.gbif.net reaches all people that have some role in the GBIF network. In the current CIRCA release 3.1 wildcards can not be used in email addresses, but that will be enabled in a future release.

Every role has a separately designated administrator. This way, for instance, the participants nodes could be allowed to manage the appointments of their data nodes. However, for time being roles are managed by the Secretariat and any requests to change appointments should be sent to helpdesk@gbif.org .

References

GBIF Document Management Guidelines (v0.6)

Version 0.4.1, 2002-12-05, Hannu Saarenmaa