BlueNet (http://www.bluenet.org.au ) is a government funded initiative to provide marine scientist with a secure, professionally managed on-line facility to manage, discover and access marine data. This exciting project will increase awareness, and access to multi-disciplinary marine data held by universities and government agencies. As such, it will enable on-line integration and re-use of marine data, prevent duplication of research effort, and permit a broader understanding of marine systems across temporal and spatial scales. The BlueNet on-line facility will also provide a long-term, secure and accessible repository for marine data.

Membership

The University of Melbourne is one of nine universities throughout Australia participating in the BlueNet project. In each university a data facilitator has been appointed by BlueNet to identify marine data held across all departments for inclusion in the BlueNet database. Data facilitators will also provide training and support to interested researchers in preparing their data for inclusion on the database. The data facilitator for the University of Melbourne is Dr Kay Morris in the Department of Zoology. Each data facilitator works with a BlueNet Champion; an academic that supports and promotes the BlueNet project. Professor Mick Keough in the Department of Zoology is the BlueNet champion for the University of Melbourne.

Further Information

You can learn more about BlueNet by contacting Dr Kay Morris (kmorris@unimelb.edu.au ) or Prof. Mick Keough (mjkeough@unimelb.edu.au ), or by visiting the BlueNet website (http://www.bluenet.org.au ). Seminars and training sessions will be announced in the near future.

BlueNet is funded by the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) under the Backing Australia’s Ability program.