17 In 2001, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United nations (FAO) set up FAO GeoNetwork (www.fao.org/geonetwork), a facility that provides various services, such as a global library for geospatial data; a metadata catalogue; a system for searching, editing and publishing geospatial information; as well as information on how to integrate geospatial data from various sources on the Internet. The United Nations World Food Program's Vulnerability Analysis & Mapping branch (WFP-VAM) soon joined FAO in the further development of GeoNetwork through formulation of additional requirements and through co-funding. Early 2004 the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) joined FAO and WFP in the development, further strengthening the GeoNetwork opensource software and improving standardized access to spatial data and information. GeoNetwork opensource is released as a standards based Free Open Source Software, implementing OGC and ISO TC211 standards. This means that users are able to use, modify and redistribute system source code software without significant restrictions, thus benefiting communities and organizations in countries with limited financial resources and often inadequate internet access. Recent work has resulted in GeoNetwork version 2 and has generated interest from other related open source software projects. Efforts are underway to work on effective integration of GeoNetwork with these projects through the OpenSDI initiative. The workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to familiarize themselves with the technology and the requirements for implementation. The GeoNetwork opensource software is maintained at http://sourceforge.net/projects/geonetwork . FOSS4G2006 - Free And Open Source Software for Geoinformatics Workshop Session 6 Jeroen Ticheler jeroen.ticheler@fao.org Jeroen Ticheler jeroen.ticheler@fao.org <MaKaC.conference.ContributionType object at 0xb483a06c> [WKS] Workshop