The Atlas of Living Australia (Atlas) contains information on all the known species in Australia aggregated from a wide range of data providers: museums, herbaria, community groups, government departments, individuals and universities. The Atlas is the Australian node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), and since 2001 the GBIF has been encouraging free and open access to biodiversity data through global online networks.

The Atlas of Living Australia can be used to:

• access information pages for each species containing photos, descriptions, maps and observations
• access scientific and common names
• explore the flora and fauna reported around your neighbourhood
• learn about Australia's biodiversity collections at museums, herbaria and other institutions
• learn about citizen science projects
• map, analyse and visualise biodiversity and environmental data and trends
• access tools to help track changes in biodiversity and the environment
• download and use open source tools
• download biodiversity data
• access images, literature and genetic information through Australian nodes of international data repositories
• volunteer for digitisation projects
• Upload datasets.

There are 370 datasets available in the Atlas, and the licensing tags make it clear which data can be used and how. The site also provides extensive explanatory information and help pages, including overviews on how data are integrated and described.

Search for records in the Atlas or browse the site today at http://www.ala.org.au/.

The Atlas of Living Australia is an Australian Government Initiative and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License.