new home for BNFNET-L in BIOSCI/BIONET

[Eng-Leong_Foo_MIRCEN-KI]

>I thought it best to generate some discussion since I have
>observed that a newsgroup stands a better chance of being formed
>if it is brought to the attention of the public.
     Robert Harper, bionet.general Msg 1258

Many thanks for your thoughtfulness and the accurate description
of my efforts. May I also add that there are a total of 23
MIRCENs (Microbial Resources Centers) in the world, most of them
deal with culture collections (e.g. DSM/Information Centre for
European Culture Collections in Germany; World Data Centre for
Culture Collections in Japan) and about 10 of them deal with bnf.
These bnf MIRCENs often act as the expert centers in the region.

((to elaborate a few: e.g. NifTAL in Hawaii publishes the BNF
Bulletin; Cairo MIRCEN holds the Egyptian Microbial Collection
and is the coordinating body for bnf networking in North Africa
and the Arab countries while the Nairobi and Bambey (Senegal)
MIRCENs coordinate the rest of the activities in Africa with
African Association for BNF. Others (Beijing, Porto Alegre -
Brazil) hold equal importance for their regions))

>Jackie has also organised "on-line" poster sessions on BNFNET
     These earlier activities were fashioned after the CMC
programme for anaerobic digestion which ran for 4 years until
1988. AD-abstracts from congresses were available in "computer
conferences" for members to interact with the congress
participants. BNFNET has taken a step further last year when we
held the 2nd BNFNET Computer conference with 15 full paper
presentations for about 100 email participants on a listserv,
subscribers include participants from Zimbabwe, Ethiopia,
Ukraine, Taiwan, Poland.


I see many complementary assets between BNFNET and BIOSCI/Bionet
and BIOSCI/Bionet as a natural home since it also houses more
than 30 other bio-newgroups.

From: Eng-leong Foo
Director, Unesco Microbial Resources Center
Karolinska Institute, 10401 Stockholm, Sweden
Phone: 46-8-7287145    Fax: 46-8-331547
email: eng-leong_foo_mircen-ki%micforum at mica.mic.ki.se