There are 2 million known species and an estimated 8 million species yet to be discovered. Knowledge and understanding of these all these species is necessary to understand our history, our present and our future.

Collecting data about the Earth’s biodiversity is not a concerted effort at this time. Though biodiversity initiatives are sprouting up around the world, they are typically funded by governments and/or philanthropists. This funding works like a pendulum: in many cases project funds run out and the data in hardcopy or digital form may be lost forever.

In the past, data on species was collected and catalogued in hardcopy archives that were maintained in museums, universities, environmental organizations and institutions both governmental and non-governmental, as well as in individual collectors’ basements. With the introduction of computers, some of this data was converted to electronic form and stored on central servers. The Internet then provided a mechanism by which the data could be shared. Currently, some biodiversity data is available on the Web in a multitude of sites. This data is typically static and updated only when projects provide inputs, which must usually be reformatted to be electronically compatible. The data is difficult to find on the Web and its quality is impossible to assess.

Currently, there are several initiatives that are attempting to link large data stores. However, these initiatives are undertaken by only a small number of organisations, each working in isolation. These initiatives mostly involve creating a web portal with links to various resources across the Internet. Some groups are involved in large and expensive data conversions that, once completed, will still not encompass all the available digitized data. Unfortunately, these efforts do not address the fundamental challenges facing the biodiversity community today:

• the inability to easily and effectively share data and information;
• the on-going loss of valuable data and information due to the lack of a stable, electronic repository; and 
• the lack of funding available for setup, configuration and on-going maintenance of centralized repositories and web portals.

As the bio-economy gathers momentum, the need for biodiversity information will increase. 

Two main sources of information are as yet untapped: the existing hardcopy archives of known specimens and the future records of currently un-catalogued species. Natural science museums around the world together hold a total of 3 billion collections of existing specimens. Both these undertakings will be facilitated by Biodiversity Virtual Resource's innovative approach to data collection, processing, transmission and storage.