The 6th Session of the IODE Steering Group for the OceanDocs project was held in Oostende, Belgium between 10-12 October 2018. The meeting reviewed progress with the implementation of its previous work plan and adopted a work plan for the next two years. It was decided to develop a promotional leaflet to highlight 10 reasons to use OceanDocs to develop an institutional repository. The meeting was informed that 2 new IT experts have now been recruited by the IOC Project Office for IODE in Oostende, Belgium which will assure professional management of OceanDocs. The meeting also recommended organizing OceanDocs training events back-to-back with IAMSLIC and EURASLIC conference in 2019 and 2020. The Group welcomed the development of the OBPS system and recommended considering using the semantic text mining, searching and natural language processing in OceanDocs. The Group further defined 6 strategic direction actions.The report is available HERE.
Information (as usually managed by librarians) is as essential in the research process as data. The marine library community should therefore be a natural key stakeholder in the IODE programme. While IODE had a Group of Experts on Marine Information Management (GE-MIM) since 1984 and also IODE national coordinators for marine information management, until 2017 IODE lacked channels of direct communication with individual marine science libraries and information centres which limited engagement with the marine information community. Accordingly IODE-XXIV adopted Recommendation IODE-XXIV.5 (IODE ASSOCIATE INFORMATION UNIT). The two first AIUs have now been formally established: the MBLWHOI Library (Woods Hole, MA, United States) and INSTM Library (Salammbo, Tunisia). Find more information HERE.
The 6th Session of the JCOMM/IODE Expert Team on Data Management Practices (ETDMP-VI) was held at the IOC Project Office for IODE in Oostende, Belgium between 17 and 19 September 2018. The Expert Team welcomed its new Chair, Ms Alessandra Giorgetti. The Expert Team proposed a revision of its terms of reference to allow on a greater focus on best practices (through the planned Ocean Best Practices project that was started in 2017 as a pilot activity), closer collaboration between IODE and JCOMM in the Marine Climate Data System (MCDS) as well as in the emerging IOC Ocean Data and Information System (ODIS) and to continue the work on metadata. The ETDMP called on WMO and IOC to ensure, through the planned consultation group, that the close relationship between the oceanographic and marine meteorological communities through JCOMM and its ETDMP, and their achievements, will not be lost when JCOMM becomes JCOM.
Through IOC Circular Letter 2728 (sent out on 27 August 2018), all IOC Member States have been invited to update or designate their IODE national coordinator for data management and for marine information management. This information will allow us to efficiently communicate with all member states on the upcoming 25th Session of the IODE Committee in Tokyo, Japan. IODE national coordinators are invited to contact their IOC focal points to make sure a reply is sent.
IOC Circular Letter 2725 has been issued on 24 August 2018 addressed to all IODE national coordinators, inviting candidatures for the position of 2 IODE Co-Chairs.
At its 24thsession the IODE Committee approved the Report of the Inter-sessional Working Group to Propose a Re-structuring of IODEwhich recommended revising the current structure, projects and activities of IODE and decided that the relation between projects (e.g. data flow) should be better communicated within the IODE community but also to the user communities. The Committee agreed that both existing and new IODE projects and activities will benefit from a more effective tracking and oversight process to help ensure that they meet IODE strategic goals and objectives. The Committee adoptedDecision IODE-XXIV.3 IODE (Project and Activity Performance Evaluation). These procedures apply to both existing and new projects and activities. This document provides guidance on how to propose new projects and evaluate existing projects.
We are very sad to learn about the loss of Dr J. Frederick (Fred) Grassle. Fred is one of the Godfathers of OBIS. We are extremely thankful for all his support and great wisdom and hope with OBIS we can keep his dreams and vision alive.
In 1997, Fred hosted a "Census of the Benthos Workshop" at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences (Rutgers University). This Workshop was part of a series "To explore the value, timeliness, and feasibility of stimulating, designing, and organizing a period of intense, comprehensive oceanic observation whose purpose would be to assess and explain the global distribution of marine life", which led to the Census of Marine Life.
At its conclusion, the Benthic Census meeting participants unanimously recommended a project to bring together existing distribution data into a common, searchable format. They formalized this recommendation in a meeting report. This report, together with a concept paper on "the census of the fishes" written by Jesse Ausubel of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation became the guiding principle for OBIS.
We wish to express our sincerest condolences to his family and friends.
At its 24thsession the IODE Committee approved the Report of the Inter-sessional Working Group to Propose a Re-structuring of IODEwhich recommended revising the current structure, projects and activities of IODE and decided that the relation between projects (e.g. data flow) should be better communicated within the IODE community but also to the user communities. The Committee agreed that both existing and new IODE projects and activities will benefit from a more effective tracking and oversight process to help ensure that they meet IODE strategic goals and objectives. The Committee adoptedDecision IODE-XXIV.3 IODE (Project and Activity Performance Evaluation). These procedures apply to both existing and new projects and activities. 
We are very sad to learn about the loss of Dr J. Frederick (Fred) Grassle. Fred is one of the Godfathers of OBIS. We are extremely thankful for all his support and great wisdom and hope with OBIS we can keep his dreams and vision alive.