~ding the vast amounts of biorlogical data related to the management, study, and use of biological resources cached in hundreds of databases around the world is difficult at best. According to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), most of this information sits unused because of a lack of eftlcient means to retrieve and derive comprehensible information from it. A solution is in the midst of development: The National Biological Information Infrastructure, an initiative of the US Geological Survey's Biological Resources Division (BRD), will eventually allow researchers, land and natural resource managers, students, and the general public to locate these databases, query multiple databases simultaneously, and retrieve data. But NBIl is still far from achieving this goal, and the substantial funding needed to make biological data more accessible via NBIl comes from the same dwindling pool of money for research that generates those data. When NBIl is completed, users will be able to draw from any number of databases to assess biological and environmental processes and conditions. NBIl will also provide software to help users analyze these data. For example, a property owner or manager trying to maintain good habitat for wildlife could use NBIl to track long-term trends in vegetation cover and changes in animal and plant species diversity, composition, and abundance on the property. The property owner could also search for literature to determine possible causes of observed changes and to identify restoration measures. Initiated in 1994, NBIl is still in what its creators refer to as the first generation. Described by NBIl manager Anne Frondorf as a distributed electronic federation;' NBIl, in its cur-