A pro-iBiosphere workshop on "How to improve technical cooperation and interoperability at the e-infrastructure level" was held at the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem (BGBM) on October 8 2013. A total of 22 participants were invited to attend the workshop, representing a wide range of international  biodiversity-related institutions and e-infrastructures. The workshop focused on the establishment of two highly relevant interoperability aspects of: (i) a consistent space of stable identifiers for collection objects across European taxonomic institutions; and (ii) a central registry for biodiversity-related services.

In the workshop 8 different implementations of stable http-URI-based identifier systems in European- and US-based taxonomic institutions where positively evaluated. These implementations are an important outcome of the fruitful collaboration between pro-iBiosphere and the Information Science and Technology Commission (ISTC) of the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF).

In addition, the workshop conducted a thorough analysis of the BiodiversityCatalogue (https://www.biodiversitycatalogue.org/) developed by the University of Manchester in the context of the EU 7^th Framework project BioVeL. As a result, a detailed list of recommended improvements of the Catalogue was compiled and agreed on. The University of Manchester will use these recommendations for setting priorities when further developing the Catalogue. Detailed results from the workshop are available here.

Authors: Anton Güntsch, Sabrina Eckert (FUB-BGBM)