About

OZCAM is an ini­tia­tive of the Coun­cil of Heads of Aus­tralian Fau­nal Col­lec­tions (CHAFC), which is the peak body rep­re­sent­ing Australia’s pub­licly acces­si­ble zoo­log­i­cal and palaeon­to­log­i­cal col­lec­tions, pri­mar­ily within the juris­dic­tion of gov­ern­ment at all lev­els (regional, state, ter­ri­tory and commonwealth).

The Sig­nif­i­cance of OZCAM

Not all muse­ums hold bio­di­ver­sity data for the same geo­graphic regions or the same time peri­ods. In aggre­ga­tion, how­ever, their data pro­vides com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age of Aus­tralian bio­di­ver­sity in space and time.

OZCAM pro­vides the capa­bil­ity to inter­ro­gate the data from all con­tribut­ing muse­ums simul­ta­ne­ously, allow­ing researchers access to an Australia-wide pic­ture for fauna.

The Australia’s Vir­tual Herbar­ium is a com­ple­men­tary site to OZCAM, where queries can be made about the flora of Australia.

Dis­sem­i­nat­ing Aus­tralian fauna data

There are a num­ber of national and inter­na­tional bioin­for­mat­ics projects that har­vest and use OZCAM data. In Aus­tralia, the Atlas of Liv­ing Aus­tralia aims to develop a bio­di­ver­sity data man­age­ment sys­temwhich will link Australia’s bio­log­i­cal knowl­edge with its sci­en­tific and agri­cul­tural ref­er­ence col­lec­tions and other cus­to­di­ans of bio­log­i­cal information.

Inter­na­tion­ally, OZCAM data are avail­able in OBIS, a site estab­lished by the Cen­sus of Marine Life pro­gram to make marine bio­geo­graphic data avail­able on the internet.

OZCAM data are also avail­able in GBIF, the largest and most com­pre­hen­sive aggre­ga­tor of bio­log­i­cal datasets worldwide.

Acknowl­edge­ments

This ver­sion of OZCAM is pro­duced and sup­ported by the Atlas of Liv­ing Aus­tralia (Atlas) on behalf of the Coun­cil of Heads of Aus­tralian Fau­nal Col­lec­tions (CHAFC).

OZCAM is built using stan­dard Atlas com­po­nents and web ser­vices while retain­ing the look and feel of the pre­vi­ous OZCAM. It also retains the tra­di­tional OZCAM focus of list­ing spec­i­mens held in Aus­tralian muse­ums. Advanced ana­lyt­i­cal tools, such as spa­tial analy­sis, are pro­vided through links to Atlas components.

For more infor­ma­tion on the Atlas see ala.org.au.

CHAFC would like to acknowl­edge the assis­tance and sup­port of the Atlas in sup­port­ing OZCAM.

Contact

OZCAM is run by the Fau­nal Col­lec­tions Infor­mat­ics Group (FCIG). To con­tact FCIG please either com­ment below or send an email: ozcam (at) ala.org.au

Copyright

It is the intent of the Coun­cil of Heads of Aus­tralian Fau­nal Col­lec­tions (CHAFC) to encour­age the use and inves­ti­ga­tion of all the resources con­tained within this site.

Mate­r­ial from the OZCAM web­site can be saved or printed for research and for per­sonal use only. Mate­r­ial includes infor­ma­tion, text, images, sounds and audio-visual mate­r­ial in this web­site and its sub-sites. Apart from the pur­poses noted the mate­r­ial may not oth­er­wise be copied, re-sold, re-distributed or framed, or oth­er­wise used whether for com­pen­sa­tion of any kind or not, with­out prior writ­ten per­mis­sion from CHAFC.

The fol­low­ing and oth­ers includ­ing non-government agen­cies and indi­vid­u­als have cer­tain rights in the mate­r­ial avail­able via this site:

• Coun­cil of Heads of Aus­tralian Fau­nal Col­lec­tions
• Com­mon­wealth of Aus­tralia
• State and Ter­ri­tory Gov­ern­ments of Tas­ma­nia, South Aus­tralia, West­ern Aus­tralia, North­ern Ter­ri­tory, Queens­land, New South Wales and Vic­to­ria
• Launce­s­ton City Coun­cil
• Aus­tralian Museum
• Com­mon­wealth Sci­en­tific and Indus­trial Research Organ­i­sa­tion
• Museum and Art Gallery of the North­ern Ter­ri­tory
• Museum Vic­to­ria
• Queen Vic­to­ria Museum and Art Gallery, Launce­s­ton
• Queens­land Museum
• South Aus­tralian Museum
• Tas­man­ian Museum and Art Gallery
• West­ern Aus­tralian Museum
  

In addi­tion, other restric­tions such as moral and cul­tural rights regard­ing the use of mate­r­ial on this site may apply.

Apart from any use per­mit­ted under the Copy­right Act 1968–1973 and Copy­right Amend­ment (Dig­i­tal Agenda) Act 2000 NO. 110, 2000, no part of the OZCAM web site may be repro­duced by any process with­out prior writ­ten per­mis­sion from CHAFC.

Fail­ure to obtain writ­ten per­mis­sion from the copy­right owner for the use of part, or all of the mate­r­ial depicted could result in the infringe­ment of copy­right. Impor­tantly, the mate­r­ial shown may carry a num­ber of copy­rights or it may need per­mis­sion for use from the orig­i­nal source.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion about copy­right you may wish to con­tact Aus­tralian Copy­right Council.

Because the laws regard­ing intel­lec­tual prop­erty are very com­plex and still evolv­ing you may want to seek expert advice before repro­duc­ing material.

Dis­claimer

The Australia’s Fauna web­site has been devel­oped by the major nat­ural his­tory col­lect­ing insti­tu­tions of Aus­tralia. The par­tic­i­pants are com­mit­ted to fos­ter­ing sci­en­tific research via access to and dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion held in their col­lec­tion data­bases. The Australia’s Fauna web­site is a prac­ti­cal expres­sion of that commitment.

The con­tent of the web­site is pro­vided for infor­ma­tion pur­poses only and is not intended as a sub­sti­tute for pro­fes­sional advice.

As much as it is able the website’s con­tent and code is com­pli­ant with pro­to­cols and stan­dards for acces­si­bil­ity and usabil­ity in rela­tion to the infor­ma­tion which appears on the site.

Infor­ma­tion accessed via this site reflects the qual­ity and accu­racy of the source datasets at the time of pub­li­ca­tion. No war­ranty is given for the accu­racy, cur­rency and error sta­tus of the infor­ma­tion. Some infor­ma­tion may change after pub­li­ca­tion due to date edit­ing or clean­ing and site updates. If users encounter errors in the data, it would be appre­ci­ated if they could use the com­ments facil­ity on this page to bring them to our attention.

Users of the web­site are respon­si­ble for assess­ing the rel­e­vance and accu­racy of website’s infor­ma­tion and should ver­ify all such infor­ma­tion with their own advis­ers. The par­tic­i­pants do not accept respon­si­bil­ity or lia­bil­ity for any loss, dam­age, cost or expense users might incur as a result of the use of, or reliance upon, the infor­ma­tion which appears on the site or the linked sites.