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CABRI (Common Access to Biological Resource and Information)

In this section:

• What is CABRI?
• Who gains by using CABRI?
• Why should I search through CABRI?
• Who are CABRI partners?
• Can I become a partner of CABRI?
• How do I become a partner of CABRI?
• Commercial links with CABRI?

What is CABRI?

CABRI (Common Access to Biological Resources and Information) is a demonstration project funded by the European Union for the period 1996-1999. It has its roots directly in the previous EU-project MINE from which it inherited the dedicated taxonomic data structure.
CABRI main goals are:

• to increase awareness among scientific users of the quality and variety of European culture collections,
• to facilitate access to information and material.

To reach our goals, the project has implemented a unified access to culture collection catalogues of participating collections, while also guaranteeing a common level of quality of material and related information.
The outstanding achievement of the project has been the development of this site, an on-line 'one-stop-shop' for biological resources where researchers can search, analyse, identify, select and pre-order strains of their interest.
CABRI on line services allows the user to check on the availability of a particular item, interrogating one or more catalogues at the same time, and to pre-order the required biological resources, once located.

Who gains by using CABRI?

All kinds of scientists from the applied sciences, from pure science, from research and development or from the diagnostic laboratory can benefit from using quality biological material offered through CABRI.
All kinds of policy makers dealing with economical, ecological, environmental, transport, and other matters involving living biological material will benefit from the quality information gathered in the CABRI catalogues for each individual item of biological material.

Why should I search through CABRI?

There are many advantages:

• you can search many catalogues simultaneously and in a homogeneous way,
• with the CABRI Simple Search, you have support for a search for synonyms,
• you can select the search engine that you prefer among the CABRI Simple Search, the SRS Standard interface and the HyperCatalogue,
• biological resources are of the highest quality level since member BRCs agreed to CABRI Quality Management Guidelines,
• you can pre-order resources of your interest without any surcharge and much faster,
• you can retrieve additional information from related databases, such as Medline.

Catalogues are usually up-to-date since collections are requested to submit them twice a year, so there is no risk to miss recent information.

Who are CABRI partners?

This service is currently maintained by nine Biological Resource Centers with support from information technology partners. CABRI BRCs are listed in the Collections' page, which is accessible from the left menu of all pages.

Can I become a partner of CABRI?

CABRI membership is open to any recognised European BRC, willing and able to work at the agreed quality levels. Member collections provide customers with high standard services, including biological resources and information. These must meet the specifications laid down in the quality management and catalogue production guidelines. Internal audits occur to ensure that these are followed.
The role of resource centres within CABRI involves meeting consensus for data fields and content type, harmonizing procedures and agreeing on equivalent methods and procedures and producing guidelines for each type of biological material.
Members obligations include active involvement in the activities of the project, agreement on Quality Management Guidelines and submission of catalogues in agreement with the CABRI catalogue production procedures for inclusion in the CABRI site.

How do I become a partner of CABRI?

A detailed description of the procedures for joining CABRI is included in the "Procedures Manual" (see "Site Map"). Preliminary contact with the CABRI Technical Committee (see the "Contacts" section of this site) is required.

Commercial links with CABRI?

CABRI is a consortium of European Collections. Each collection is independent and has its own methods of operating, but always meeting CABRI's guidelines for quality.
CABRI does not itself engage in any commercial links: contacts for redistribution of biological resources should be established with single collections.

Last revised:
February 2023