The Norwegian Barcode of Life Network (NorBOL) recently received notice of new and continued funding from the Research Council of Norway (RCN) and the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre (NBIC) for development of NorBOL to a full scale national research infrastructure. The funding period is for five years (2014-2018).

The project will have a strong focus on the further development of an open access barcode library of Norwegian species in Barcode of Life Data Systems, but also capacity building and networking among the NorBOL-partners will have priority. The RCN and NBIC funded project is coordinated by the NTNU University Museum in Trondheim with the main collaborative partners at the  University Museum of Bergen, the Natural History Museum i Oslo, the Tromsø University Museum and the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario at the University of Guelph. Other Norwegian collaborators in NorBOL, particularly the research institutes (see list here), will be continue to be very important contributors to he projects as a considerable amount of expertise is located here. All NorBOL partners are invited to join the project’s advisory board while a smaller assemblage of partners will constitute NorBOL’s steering board.

The project has a total budget of c. 100 M NOK over five years. About 70% is estimated in kind support from project partners and associated research and inventory projects. The remaining funding of the project is covered by The Research Council of Norway (25,6 mill.) and the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre (4 mill.) and will largely fund four “barcode managers” at the University Museums, project coordination, workshops and parts of the analytical costs related to DNA sequencing and databasing.

Visit norbol.org and follow @norwbol on Twitter for regular updates on the project.