[tdwg-content] NCD and DwC
Ann_Hitchcock at nps.gov
Ann_Hitchcock at nps.gov
Fri Aug 21 00:11:32 CEST 2009
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."
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. 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!"
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.
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.
Thank you 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> 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
>
>
>
More information about the tdwg-content
mailing list