Welcome to the web site for the New Zealand Organisms Register (NZOR). Over 2009 to 2011 the vision for NZOR is to create an accurate, authoritative, comprehensive and continuously updated catalogue of taxonomic names of all New Zealand biota and other taxa of importance to New Zealand.

NZOR is a national information infrastructure project to efficiently mobilise, integrate, and share authoritative taxonomic information critical to maintaining New Zealand’s Conservation and Biosecurity decision support systems and processes.

NZOR will be a digital catalogue of taxonomic data associated with around 100,000 organisms relevant to New Zealand, and made available on the web:

• with content dynamically and automatically derived from authoritative data providers within New Zealand and globally
• where data content from registered data providers is curated by expert taxonomists.
• with taxonomic opinion on the preferred scientific name and synonyms according to a cited taxonomic authority
• with an accepted taxonomic hierarchy indicating the placement of a species in the ‘tree of life’
• with alternate vernacular and Maori species names where they are available
• with a statement on the presence or absence of the organism within a geographical region (New Zealand) according to cited evidence.

NZOR will provide:

• web interfaces to NZOR data content.
• web-services to allow end-users to dynamically integrate NZOR content into local databases to free them from the burden of maitaining the integrity of these data locally
• web-services to facilitate the checking of species lists for errors and inconsistencies
• feedback facilities allowing end users to direct queries to individual data providers
• Globally Unique Identifiers to serve as permanent, unambiguous and resolvable links to NZOR data content.

NZOR will also be connected internationally through a new EU Framework 7 program (4D4Life), managed by Species2000, and funded to support the completion of the global Catalogue of Life through an international network of regional data providers.

You can find out more about NZOR in the About NZOR, and Documents sections. You can also learn how to get involved and participate in the project to develop NZOR.

The NZOR project is funded by the Terrestrial and Freshwater Biodiversity Information System (TFBIS) Programme.