BioGUID.org is a service for indexing and cross-linking identifiers for data objects within the realm of Biodiversity informatics. The importance of reliable globally unique identifiers for mobilizing biodiversity data has been well established through multiple workshops, whitepapers, and publications spanning several decades. However, the biodiversity informatics community has made very little real progress in establishing broadly adopted standards and coordinating data providers towards common and sensible practice. Legacy identifiers (such as catalog numbers for specimens, and primary keys of local databases) continue to be generated, and are ineffectual for use as reliable, persistent and actionable digital identifiers. Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) have gained widespread use for publications, but have not been widely adopted for identification of other kinds of data objects. What results is a somewhat chaotic state of multiple identifiers being minted by multiple sources for the same conceptual object, with little or no coordinated effort in place to cross-link these myriad identifiers. BioGUID.org was created to serve as a common indexing and cross-linking system for a wide range of Identifiers used in the biodiversity community.

I was inspired to build BioGUID.org to make it easier to cross-link biodiversity datasets, and make them more powerful by harnesing identifiers.