[tdwg-content] NCD and DwC

Ann_Hitchcock at nps.gov Ann_Hitchcock at nps.gov
Thu Aug 27 03:28:02 CEST 2009


John

Thank you very much!

I believe the "ownerInstitutionCode" when used with "otherCatalogNumbers"
and, as needed, with "dcterms:access;Rights", "dcterms:bibliographic
Citation", "dcterms:rights", "determs:rights:Holder", and
"occurrenceRemarks", will adequately address the property interests of the
owning institution.  These changes will help to resolve issues that the
National Park Service and other land-managing entities (including
countries) face as they work with repositories that have custody of these
collections to make the collections available on the web, for example in
virtual herbaria.

Ann

Ann Hitchcock
National Park Service
1849 C Street, NW (2301)
Washington, DC 20240-0001
202-354-2271
Fax:  202-371-2422


                                                                           
             "John R.                                                      
             WIECZOREK"                                                    
             <tuco at berkeley.ed                                          To 
             u>                        Ann_Hitchcock at nps.gov               
             Sent by:                                                   cc 
             tdwg-content-boun         Lee Belbin <lee at tdwg.org>, TDWG     
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                                       "donald.hobern"                     
                                       <donald.hobern at csiro.au>, Neil      
             08/26/2009 12:12          Thomson <n.thomson at nhm.ac.uk>,      
             AM                        tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org 
                                       , Gail Kampmeier <gkamp at uiuc.edu>,  
                                       Wouter Addink <wouter at eti.uva.nl>   
             Please respond to                                     Subject 
             tuco at berkeley.edu         Re: [tdwg-content] NCD and DwC      
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           




Comments inline.

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 3:11 PM, <Ann_Hitchcock at nps.gov> wrote:
> John
>
> The set of definitions that you propose below works for the institution
> with custody, except for CollectionID, which still refers to the
"original
> collection."  These definitions are clearer than those that used the term
> "administering."

My oversight. The intention was to remove "original" but I missed it
in that definition. Instead it should have been:
collectionID: "A unique identifier for the collection or dataset from
which the record was derived. For physical specimens, the recommended
best practice is to use the identifier in a collections registry such
as the Biodiversity Collections Index
(http://www.biodiversitycollectionsindex.org/)."

> I agree that all relationships to specimens and data cannot be described,
> for example custody for temporary purposes, such as identification,
> research, or preservation treatment, cannot be recorded here.

All relationships can be described (using the ResourceRelationship
class), just not in a flat schema.

> However,
> ownership and (long-term) custody are fundamental and each implies
certain
> rights and responsibilities.  The suggestion that "owning institution"
> should not be considered because it "can be very controversial" is
> spurious.  On that basis, the schema would need to drop "TaxonID" and any
> number of other data fields that "can be very controversial!"

Point taken.

> Although the specimen or record owner is generally the ultimate rights
> holder, the physical property owner may not always be the intellectual
> property owner.  Therefore, using the rights holder field is not a
> substitute for identifying the physical property owner.  Loan agreements
> generally require that the owner of the collection be credited in
exhibits,
> publications, and other uses and that the owner's catalog number be
cited.
> How do you propose that the custody institution, when sharing data about
> the collection, will credit the owner?  Listing the owner's catalog
number
> under other catalog numbers is helpful but does not indicate whether this
> is a previously used number or a current catalog number or a collector
> number, or an owner number, etc..
>
> The structure assumes that the prime
> catalog number is that of the custody institution, which is sharing the
> data, but the owning institution catalog number is ultimately the prime
or
> ranking number, if a choice is forced.  The reason that the owning
> institution number must be considered prime, is that the custody
> institution is a Borrower (albeit a long-term Borrower).  Absence of an
> Owner Institution Code means the Custody Institution cannot fulfill its
> legal responsibility to credit the owner and cite the owner's catalog
> number and, in sharing the data without this information, the Custody
> Institution will preclude all other subsequent users from meeting this
> legal obligation to  identify the owner of the specimen or record.

OK, let's keep institutionCode with the definition "The name (or
acronym) in use by the institution having custody of the object(s) or
information referred to in the record." and add ownerInstitutionCode
with the definition "The name (or acronym) in use by the institution
having ownership of the object(s) or information referred to in the
record." If we include the ownerInstitutionCode

> You, of course, have an in depth understanding of how this will all work.
> I, however, still maintain that the solution proposed for parallel data
> sets for the owning institution and the institution of custody is the
> clearest and most informative to the individual seeking information about
> the specimens or data and facilitates meeting the obligation to credit
the
> owner and cite the owner's catalog number.  See Issues 35 and 36 at
> http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/list.

The issues on the code site don't recommend a collection code or a
catalog number for the owner, though that seems to be suggested here.
I really don't want to add two more terms to be able to capture this
information for a special case, especially since the same can be done
with the otherCatalogNumbers term aided by the new
ownerInstitutionCode. Does that seem like a reasonable compromise?

> Thank you for your consideration of this issue.

Thanks for pushing the case toward a better understanding.

John

> Ann
>
> Ann Hitchcock
> National Park Service
> 1849 C Street, NW (2301)
> Washington, DC 20240-0001
> 202-354-2271
> Fax:  202-371-2422
>
>
>
>             "John R.
>             WIECZOREK"
>             <tuco at berkeley.ed                                          To
>             u>                        Ann_Hitchcock at nps.gov
>             Sent by:                                                   cc
>             gtuco.btuco at gmail         "donald.hobern"
>             .com                      <donald.hobern at csiro.au>, Gail
>                                       Kampmeier <gkamp at uiuc.edu>, Lee
>                                       Belbin <lee at tdwg.org>, Neil Thomson
>             08/18/2009 02:41          <n.thomson at nhm.ac.uk>, TDWG Content
>             PM                        Mailing List
>                                       <tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org>,
>                                       tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org
>             Please respond to         , Wouter Addink <wouter at eti.uva.nl>
>             tuco at berkeley.edu                                     Subject
>                                       Re: [tdwg-content] NCD and DwC
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hi Ann,
>
> Thanks for the clear example and explanation. I agree with you that my
> attempt to solve the problem of propagating data sets (each adding
> record identifiers) by referring to the "original" record has problems
> when it comes to this "custody case". I think the best identifiers to
> use in the institutionCode, collectionID, collectionCode, and
> catalogNumber would be those for the repository institution, the one
> in which the specimens are actually curated, the one which you
> describe as having custody. If I take the references to "original" out
> of the definitions then the choice of what information to put there
> will be at the discretion of the data publisher. That's probably fine.
>
> Specifically, I propose the following new definitions:
>
> institutionCode: "The name (or acronym) in use by the institution
> having custody of the object(s) or information referred to in the
> record."
> collectionCode: "The name (or acronym) identifying the collection or
> data set from which the record was derived."
> collectionID: "A unique identifier for the original collection or
> dataset from which the record was derived. For physical specimens, the
> recommended best practice is to use the identifier in a collections
> registry such as the Biodiversity Collections Index
> (http://www.biodiversitycollectionsindex.org/)."
> datasetID: "An identifier for the data set. May be a global unique
> identifier or an identifier specific to a collection or institution."
> (unchanged)
> catalogNumber: An identifier (preferably unique) for the record within
> the data set or collection.
>
> There exist many relationships that institutions can have with a
> specimen (or data set), and I don't think it is necessary, or even
> appropriate, to support all of these possibilities (including
> ownership, which can be very controversial) in the primary data served
> via Simple Darwin Core. The mechanism exists to relate records between
> data sets explicitly using the ResourceRelationship class as well as
> through the otherCatalogNumbers and associatedOccurrences terms. I
> posit that these are sufficient to cover the cases presented thus far.
>
> John
>
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 6:40 AM, <Ann_Hitchcock at nps.gov> wrote:
>> John et al.:
>>
>> I am responding regarding the definitions outlined in  your note below
>> pertaining to
>>
>> institutionCode:
>> collectionCode:
>> collectionID:
>> datasetID:
>> catalogNumber:
>>
>> The definitions that you provided work from the standpoint of the
>> originating institution, but may not work well from the standpoint of a
>> repository when the originating institution remains involved in the
>> management of the specimens and records while the specimens may be on
> loan
>> to the repository.  I can best describe the problem by giving a typical
>> example from the National Park Service.
>>
>> Example:  NPS permits the collection of specimens in a park.  The
> specimens
>> remain federal property and are cataloged in the NPS system.  The
> specimens
>> go on loan to the State University Museum, which has agreed to serve as
> the
>> repository.  The State University Museum (SUM) creates a new catalog
> record
>> for the specimen using its catalog system, while cross-referencing the
> NPS
>> catalog number.  The State University Museum periodically reports to NPS
> on
>> research use of the specimen, third party loans (which NPS authorizes
the
>> State University Museum to make), annotations, condition, etc.  NPS
> updates
>> its catalog record (the original record) with this information.  As a
>> condition of the permit, the permitted researcher submits copies of
> his/her
>> field notes, maps, photos (a.k.a. associated resource management
records)
>> to NPS and conveys the copyright.  NPS catalogs the resource management
>> records in its archival system.  NPS provides copies of the field notes
> to
>> the State University Museum for use in managing the specimens and to
>> provide researcher access to the notes.
>>
>> If this example follows the definitions outlined below, the NPS, as the
>> institution administering the original record (and specimens), would be
>> identified in the InstitutionCode, CollectionCode, and CollectionID,
> while
>> the repository institution could show its information in
>> AssociatedOccurrence (for example, "same as SUM:Mammal:1234") and
>> OtherCatalogNumber fields.  Is the repository going to be satisfied?
>> Afterall, the repository is where researchers go to see the
> specimens.  Is
>> the repository getting adequate recognition for its role?
>>
>> An alternative, as previously proposed, could provide for parallel data
>> sets for the owning institution and institution of custody.  See Issues
> 35
>> and 36 at http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/list.
>>
>> Thanks to all for your consideration of this issue.
>>
>> Ann
>>
>> Ann Hitchcock
>> National Park Service
>> 1849 C Street, NW (2301)
>> Washington, DC 20240-0001
>> 202-354-2271
>> Fax:  202-371-2422
>>
>>
>>
>>             "John R.
>>             WIECZOREK"
>>
<tuco at berkeley.ed                                          To
>>             u>                        Wouter Addink <wouter at eti.uva.nl>,
>>             Sent by:                  Neil Thomson
<n.thomson at nhm.ac.uk>,
>>             tdwg-content-boun         TDWG Content Mailing List
>>             ces at lists.tdwg.or         <tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org>
>>
g                                                          cc
>>                                       Lee Belbin <lee at tdwg.org>, Gail
>>                                       Kampmeier <gkamp at uiuc.edu>,
>>             08/15/2009 08:14          "donald.hobern"
>>             AM                        <donald.hobern at csiro.au>
>>
Subject
>>                                       [tdwg-content] NCD and DwC
>>             Please respond to
>>             tuco at berkeley.edu
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi Wouter and Neil (and others),
>>
>> I hope both of you are well. I know this may be a busy time (or,
>> better, vacation time), but I hope that you have had a chance to
>> consider recent discussions on tdwg-content about the relationships
>> between DwC, NCD and the TDWG Ontology. In addition to those public
>> discussions, I'm adding a few questions and comments I have had during
>> the progression of the Darwin Core Review. I'm cc'ing those having a
>> clear vested interest in resolution on both sides. I would urge you to
>> look at the relevant tdwg-content commentary as well as my concerns
>> from the messages below so that we can hopefully quickly come to a
>> consensus on joint plan. I say quickly because I am eager that DwC
>> review shouldn't undergo further unnecessary delays.
>>
>> In case it's a bit much to go through all of the "literature" relevant
>> to the proposal I'm making, and in hopes of facilitating quick
>> solutions, I'll summarize.
>>
>> 1) Dublin Core recommends the use of the dcterms rather than their
>> antiquated dc counterparts. Shouldn't NCD follow suit? Specific
>> example: instead of http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/source, use
>> http://purl.org/dc/terms/source.
>>
>> 2) NCD is using terms from the TDWG ontology, which is to date an
>> unfinished academic exercise without any review. This dependency seems
>> to me to guarantee that NCD will require revision when the ontology is
>> revised. This wouldn't necessarily be required if NCD took the reigns
>> and defined terms that aren't already in another standard (the
>> Ontology does not fit into this category) within its own domain.
>> Specifically, abandon http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/ in favor of
>> http://rs.tdwg.org/ncd/terms/.
>>
>> 3) Reword some of the NCD term definitions so that NCD can be used
>> more generally for data sets (data collections), and not just for
>> object collections.
>>
>> With these commitments, DwC could safely move forward reusing NCD
>> terms. Without the last two, DwC will have to redefine terms such as
>> collectionID.
>>
>> Following are relevant message excerpts from previous tdwg-content
>> postings:
>>
>> -----
>> from         John R. WIECZOREK <tuco at berkeley.edu>
>> reply-to           tuco at berkeley.edu
>> to           TDWG Content Mailing List <tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org>
>> date         Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 6:20 PM
>> subject            Darwin Core Collection-related terms
>>
>> I have taken the content of the Darwin Core Issues 32 and 33 to post
>> here as they both require discussion before an unambiguous
>> recommendation can be made.
>>
>> >From http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=32
>>
>> Reported by ren... at cria.org.br
>> Term Name: collectionID
>>
>> Recommendation: Reuse the term which is already defined in NCD (on the
>> other hand, the NCD term defined in the corresponding RDF file should
>> probably not be restricted to a specific domain).
>>
>> Submitter: Renato De Giovanni
>>
>>
>> Comment 1 by gtuco.btuco
>> This is indeed intended to be the same term. Can you provide the URI
>> to the term in
>> NCD?
>> Status: Accepted
>> Labels: Milestone-Release1.0 Priority-Critical
>>
>> Comment 2 by ren... at cria.org.br
>> Currently the URI is:
>>
>> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Collection#collectionId
>>
>> But I think that relationship terms like this one should probably not
>> be bound to a
>> domain since they can be used by objects from many different classes.
>> I'm not sure if
>> it's possible to change NCD and if the NCD creators would agree with
>> this change.
>> Perhaps a better URI for this term would be:
>>
>> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/collectionId
>>
>> >From http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=33
>>
>> Reported by ren... at cria.org.br
>> Term Name: collectionCode
>>
>> Recommendation: Reuse existing term from NCD, but I would probably also
>> suggest to change the NCD term from
>> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Collection#acronymOrCoden to
>> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/collectionCode (without a domain). It
> would
>> be nice to know Markus' or Roger's opinion about this, since they
>> participated in the NCD group.
>>
>> Submitter: Renato De Giovanni
>> -------
>> from         Tim Robertson <trobertson at gbif.org>
>> to           tuco at berkeley.edu
>> cc           TDWG Content Mailing List <tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org>
>> date         Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 1:12 AM
>> subject            Re: [tdwg-content] Darwin Core Collection-related
> terms
>>
>> Hi John, Renato
>>
>> Thinking aloud, some possible options I see might be:
>>
>> a) - omit it from the DwC terms altogether
>> b) - reuse the existing URI if the NCD term domain was derestricted
>> c) - keep a duplicate term in the DwC NS
>> d) - ? keep a duplicate term in the DwC NS and add some kind of "is
>> equivalent of" to the NCD acronymOrCoden
>> e) - ? keep a duplicate term in the DwC NS and have NCD acronymOrCoden
>> do some "refinement" of dwc:collectionCode
>>
>> My preference is for c) (or if possible e) for clear boundaries of dwc
>> and also maintainability reasons.
>>
>> To me, DwC fits nicely as a set of commonly used terms which are
>> unrestricted to domain classes, and extend the terms offered by the
>> DublinCore Metadata Terms.  Using these terms we can assemble
>> models/schemas etc.  To say DwC now also includes terms from other
>> namespaces (which are currently restricted to domains), I think might
>> become more difficult to grasp and maintain.    I also wonder if going
>> down the route of b) or d) for one term could open the floodgates for
>> a lot of other terms (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#genus ->
>> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/TaxonName#genusPart) and effectively
>> move towards being an "index of data and object properties in the TDWG
>> ontology".
>>
>> Just some thoughts,
>>
>> Tim
>> -------
>> from         renato at cria.org.br
>> to           TDWG Content Mailing List <tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org>
>> date         Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 6:52 AM
>> subject            Re: [tdwg-content] Darwin Core Collection-related
> terms
>>
>> Hi Tim,
>>
>> Nice summary. My preference is for b. Considering that NCD follows the
>> same principles of this new DarwinCore version, I see no reason for
>> duplicating the same term. No matter how much we try to keep boundaries
>> clear between standards, there will always be some kind of semantic
>> overlap between them. Having the same terms defined under different
>> namespaces can be very confusing for users. I think TDWG should try to
>> make things as reusable as possible.
>>
>> To be more specific, I would suggest the following changes to NCD:
>>
>> 1) Remove the domain from collectionId and institutionId and rename them
>> to "Id" so that the URI becomes:
>>
>> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Collection#Id
>> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Institution#Id
>>
>> 2) Remove the domain from #acronymOrCoden (Collection) and rename it to
>> "Code" so that the URI becomes:
>>
>> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Collection#Code
>>
>> 3) Add a Code property in Institution (without a domain) making it:
>>
>> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Institution#Code
>>
>> Then DarwinCore or any other standard can easily reuse these terms.
>>
>> Depending on how this gets solved, yes, I think we should open the
>> floodgates...
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>
>> Renato
>>
>> ------
>> from         John R. WIECZOREK <tuco at berkeley.edu>
>> reply-to           tuco at berkeley.edu
>> to           Lynn Kutner <Lynn_Kutner at natureserve.org>
>> cc           TDWG Content Mailing List <tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org>
>> date         Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:57 PM
>> subject            Re: [tdwg-content] InstitutionCode Issue - ownership
> vs.
>> custodianship
>>
>> The codes are now meant for any data set (a collection of data), not
>> just collections of objects. They were actually always meant to be
>> that way, but the descriptions had their origins in the specimen
>> collections realm. Specifically, the following terms can all be used
>> to identify where data are coming from originally:
>>
>> institutionCode
>> collectionCode
>> collectionID
>> datasetID
>>
>> while the Dublin Core terms dc:rights, and dc:rightsHolder can be used
>> to describe the original or other vested interests.
>>
>> To be more clear about what I meant about collection-related terms, I
>> would propose changing the descriptions as follow:
>>
>> institutionCode: "The name (or acronym) in use by the institution
>> administering the original record."
>> collectionCode: "The name (or acronym) identifying the original
>> collection or data set from which the record was derived."
>> collectionID: "A unique identifier for the original collection or
>> dataset from which the record was derived. Recommended best practice
>> is to use the identifier in a collections registry such as the
>> Biodiversity Collections Index
>> (http://www.biodiversitycollectionsindex.org/)."
>> datasetID: "An identifier for the data set. May be a global unique
>> identifier or an identifier specific to a collection or institution."
>> (unchanged)
>> catalogNumber: An identifier (preferably unique) for the record within
>> the data set or collection.
>> _______________________________________________
>> tdwg-content mailing list
>> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
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