Archipelago Wildlife Library

About STERNA

Since early summer of 2008 Archipelagos IMERAS (Institute for Marine and Environmental Research of the Aegean Sea) has been involved in a partnership with fourteen leading European institutions across ten European countries.  These institutions, including natural history museums and non-governmental organisations, either both collect and distribute information on the natural world or deal with information technologies.  They have all come together in order to create a comprehensive, multilingual, information space relating to birds and, in doing so, enriching and enhancing  digital libraries across the entirety of Europe.

This information space includes a wealth of information from around Europe pertaining to birds.  It includes digital images, video and sound clips, biological descriptions and many more articles and documents, all of which are freely accessible to the general public and interested parties.

The Aim of STERNA

STERNA stands for Semantic Web-based Thematic European Reference Network Application and focussing on birds its aim is…

“…to create a dispersed and networked information space, supported and sustained by a member network of autonomous content organisations which serves users with a special interest in nature and wildlife worldwide.”

If you wish to learn more about the aims, objectives and methods of the STERNA project please visit http://www.sterna-net.eu

STERNA Members

• Archipelagos Greece
• DOPPS BirdLife Slovenia
• Heritage Malta Malta
• Hungarian Natural History Museum Hungary
• Icelandic Institute of Natural History Iceland
• Natural History Museum / Municipality of Amaroussion Greece
• Natural History Museum of Luxembourg Luxembourg
• Naturalis Netherlands
• Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision Netherlands
• Royal Museum for Central Africa Belgium
• Salzburg Research Austria
• Teylers Museum Netherlands
• ARKive UK
• Trezorix Netherlands

The STERNA project is supported and partly funded by the eContentplus programme of the European Commission.

STERNA Search Portal

One of the final results of the STERNA project will be the creation of several search portals hosted at different member institutions.  These search portals will act as access points into the information that the member institutions have available on birds.  The prototypes of these search portals are currently available at ARKive, Naturalis and Heritage Malta.  Our own search portal prototype can be accessed below.

If you wish to test the Archipelagos STERNA search portal, and gain information about birds from around Europe, please click on the link below.

Archipelagos STERNA Search Portal