Information on species has been traditionally organized in terms of a rigid set of nomenclature coding. Although efforts to create international standards via integration of well-accepted taxonomic data models such as TNS (Taxonomic Name Server of the Marine Biological Laboratory, GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) and Species200 have been initiated, the discovery process of such databases and information dissemination still remains problematic. In this presentation, we propose the development of a low-barrier framework in which taxonomic data can be reliably and comprehensively archived in distributed centres and shared via a common gateway. By adopting the OAI-PMH PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) strategy we can make a large pool of data available to anyone interested, while on the other hand still maintaining the identity and authority of individual research programmes.With the OAI-PMH, the metadata from individual institutional repositories can be gathered together, i.e., harvested in one central database and user-oriented services (for example, related publications) can be provided based on this centrally harvested data. A service provider example for geological and environmental data will be presented together with a pilot study for integreating PLANKTON*NET at AWI and Roscoff.