[tdwg-content] Darwin Core Collection-related terms

John R. WIECZOREK tuco at berkeley.edu
Fri Jul 24 19:01:57 CEST 2009


Hi Lynn,

I think you must be referring to an outdated schema. None of the
schemas presented within the body of the Darwin Core documentation
(http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/index.htm) has any required elements. For
schemas, see Simple Darwin Core (SDC,
http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/simple/index.htm), especially the rules
section (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/simple/index.htm#rules), and the
SDC schema (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/xsd/tdwg_dwc_simple.xsd).

John

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 8:31 AM, Lynn Kutner<Lynn_Kutner at natureserve.org> wrote:
> I was just curious how the collectionCode and collectionID apply to datasets that are not part of things like university / museum / herbarium collections?
>
> The NCD description (http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Collection#Code) says "Ontology describing the metadata returned for LSIDs that are used for natural collections records. i.e. curated groups of specimens."
>
> Under that description - I don't think that our data (as well as of many other institutions) would fit since we have more "observation" data and not much curated specimen data.
>
> But if I'm understanding the DWC schema correctly collectionCode and institutionCode are required elements?
>
> It would be nice if terms could be re-used in DWC and NCD, but my only concern is if the NCD definition is more narrow than the users of DWC then it becomes confusing.
>
> Thank you!
> Lynn
>
> Lynn Kutner
> NatureServe
> phone: (703) 797-4804
> email:  lynn_kutner at natureserve.org
> http://www.natureserve.org/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of renato at cria.org.br
> Sent: Friday, July 24, 2009 7:52 AM
> To: TDWG Content Mailing List
> 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
>
>
>> 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
>>
>>
>> On Jul 24, 2009, at 3:20 AM, John R. WIECZOREK wrote:
>>
>>> 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
>>>
>>> Comment 3 by gtuco.btuco, Today (1 minute ago)
>>> Since this issue no longer has a single defensible concrete solution I
>>> think it should
>>> be moved to the discussion list tdwg-content until one can be
>>> proposed. I'll copy the
>>> whole issue thread there.
>>>
>>> -----
>>>> 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
>>>
>>> Comment 1 by gtuco.btuco
>>> Also moving this issue to tdwg-content for discussion.
>
>
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