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One of the major projects currently developing US Geoscience Information Network capabilities is named the Geoscience Information Network (NSF GIN).  This project provides funding to assemble key modules and adopt standards and protocols to build an interoperable national Geoscience Information Network (“GIN”) that already has strong community engagement and broad consensus. The GIN is being developed in the context of national and international communities for enhanced global geospatial data interoperability. In an NSF-sponsored workshop, the nation's geological surveys agreed to the development of a na-tional Geoscience Information Network (GIN) that is distributed, interoperable, uses open source standards and common protocols, respects and acknowledges data ownership, fosters communi-ties of practice to grow, and facilitates development of new web services and clients. Geological surveys have an estimated 2,000 – 3,000 databases that represent one of the largest, long-term information resources on the geology of the United States and collectively constitute a national geoscience data “backbone” for research and applications.