Edition 7 - June, 2000

BIOINFORMATICS CORNER: CABRI

The CABRI (Common Access to Biological Resources and Information) project aims to meet the need of European biotechnology research and development for high quality biological resources, by providing common access for the user - via the Internet - to the resources and information of the providers within the project.

Between 1997 and 1999, CABRI was developed as a demonstration project, co-funded by the partners and through a grant from DG XII of the Commission of the European Union, under the Fourth Framework Programme. BCCM was a partner in this project, along with other major European culture collections.

The centres that took part in this project currently offer 23 catalogues, covering most aspects of biodiversity: human and animal cells, bacteria, fungi, yeasts, plasmids, animal and plant viruses, and DNA probes. The total holdings of their collections are around 140,000 deposits, which represent approximately half those available in Europe.

CABRI formed an integrated resource centre service linking these catalogue databases. Now, users world-wide can access these relevant catalogues during one search session through a common entry point, and order products on-line. These orders are immediately delivered to their place of work.

CABRI developed a web site and three CABRI mirror sites are also maintained. The BCCM coordination team maintains the Belgian CABRI mirror site. The URLs of these sites are:

CABRI main site: http://www.cabri.org
Belgian mirror site: http://www.be.cabri.org
French mirror site: http://www.fr.cabri.org
Italian mirror site: http://www.it.cabri.org

A prerequisite was that all aspects of the product offered must be of the highest possible quality. Therefore, CABRI quality guidelines were devised and are strictly adhered to by the partners. These guidelines are also accessible on-line.

In the future, CABRI will become a service of the European Biological Resource Centre Network (EBRCN).

Contact
IR.F.GUISSART,
BCCM COORDINATION TEAM
TEL: +32 2 238 36 41
FAX: +32 2 230 59 12
E-MAIL:guis@belspo.be

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Edition 7 - June, 2000