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<FONT size=2 face=Tahoma><B>From:</B> tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org
[mailto:tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Tim Robertson
(GBIF)<BR><B>Sent:</B> 11 October 2010 13:00<BR><B>To:</B> joel
sachs<BR><B>Cc:</B> tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org;
tdwg-bioblitz@googlegroups.com<BR><B>Subject:</B> Re: [tdwg-content] What I
learned at the TechnoBioBlitz<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>Hi Joel,
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Thanks for taking the time to summarise this. A few comments
inline:</DIV>
<DIV><BR>
<DIV>
<DIV>On Oct 11, 2010, at 1:46 PM, joel sachs wrote:</DIV><BR
class=Apple-interchange-newline>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV>One of the goals of the recent bioblitz was to think about the
suitability <BR>and appropriatness of TDWG standards for citizen science.
Robert Stevenson <BR>has volunteered to take the lead on preparing a
technobioblitz lessons <BR>learned document, and though the scope of this
document is not yet <BR>determined, I think the audience will include bioblitz
organizers, <BR>software developers, and TDWG as a whole. I hope no one is shy
about <BR>sharing lessons they think they learned, or suggestions that they
have. We <BR>can use the bioblitz google group for this discussion, and copy
in <BR>tdwg-content when our discussion is standards-specific.<BR><BR>Here are
some of my immediate observations:<BR><BR>1. Darwin Core is almost exactly
right for citizen science. However, there <BR>is a desperate need for examples
and templates of its use. To illustrate <BR>this need: one of the developers
spoke of the design choice between "a <BR>simple csv file and a Darwin Core
record". But a simple csv file is a <BR>legitimate representation of Darwin
Core! To be fair to the developer, <BR>such a sentence might not have struck
me as absurd a year ago, before <BR>Remsen said "let's use DwC for the
bioblitz".<BR><BR>We provided a couple of example DwC records (text and rdf)
in the bioblitz <BR>data profile [1]. I think the lessons learned
document should include an <BR>on-line catalog of cut-and-pasteable examples
covering a variety of use <BR>cases, together with a dead simple desciption of
DwC, something like <BR>"Darwin Core is a collection of terms, together with
definitions."<BR></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV><BR>Here are areas where we augemented or diverged from DwC in the
bioblitz:<BR><BR>i. We added obs:observedBy [2], since there is no equivalent
property in <BR>DwC, and it's important in Citizen Science (though often not
available).<BR></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Is this not the intention of recordedBy?</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><A
href="http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/#recordedBy">http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/#recordedBy</A></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Arial, 'Arial Unicode MS', Helvetica, sans-serif; FONT-SIZE: small"
class=Apple-style-span>A list (concatenated and separated) of names of people,
groups, or organizations responsible for recording the original Occurrence. The
primary collector or observer, especially one who applies a personal identifier
(recordNumber), should be listed first.</SPAN></DIV><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV>ii. We used geo:lat and geo:long [3] instead of DwC terms for latitude
and <BR>longitude. The geo namespace is a well used and supported standard,
and <BR>records with geo coordinates are automatically mapped by several
<BR>applications.</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Keeping an inventory of applications somewhere might be worthwhile to help
promote or decide on this.</DIV><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV>Since everyone was using GPS to retrieve their coordinates, <BR>we
were able to assume WGS-84 as the datum.<BR><BR>If someone had used another
Datum, say XYZ, we would have added columns to <BR>the Fusion table so that
they could have expressed their coordiantes in <BR>DwC, as,
e.g.:<BR>DwC:decimalLatitude=41.5<BR>DwC:decimalLongitude=-70.7<BR>DwC:geodeticDatum=XYZ<BR><BR>(I
would argue that it should be kosher DwC to express the above as simply
<BR>XYZ:lat and XYZ:long. DwC already incorporates terms from other
<BR>namespaces, such as Dublin Core, so there is precedent for this.<BR><BR>2.
DwC:scientificName might be more user friendly than taxonomy:binomial <BR>and
the other taxonomy machine tags EOL uses for flickr images. If
<BR>DwC:scientificName isn't self-explanatory enough, a user can look it up,
<BR>and see that any scientific name is acceptable, at any taxonomic rank, or
<BR>not having any rank. And once we have a scientific name, higher ranks can
<BR>be inferred.<BR><BR>3. Catalogue of Life was an important part of the
workflow, but we <BR>had some problems with it. Future bioblitzes might
consider using <BR>something like a CoL fork, as recently described by Rod
Page [4].<BR><BR>4. We didn't include "basisOfRecord" in the original data
profile, and so <BR>it wasn't a column in the Fusion Table [5]. But when a
transcriber felt it <BR>was necessary to include in order to capture data in a
particular field <BR>sheet, she just added the column to the table. This
flexibility of schema <BR>is important, and is in harmony with the semantic
web.<BR></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>For citizen science, would it not make more sense to apply some easy
guideline to select one of:</DIV>
<DIV>- <SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif; FONT-SIZE: 13px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px"
class=Apple-style-span>HumanObservation</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif; FONT-SIZE: 13px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px"
class=Apple-style-span>- </SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif; FONT-SIZE: 13px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px"
class=Apple-style-span>PreservedSpecimen</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif; FONT-SIZE: 13px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px"
class=Apple-style-span>- </SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif; FONT-SIZE: 13px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px"
class=Apple-style-span>LivingSpecimen</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif; FONT-SIZE: 13px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px"
class=Apple-style-span>(<A
href="http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/wiki/RecordLevelTerms">http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/wiki/RecordLevelTerms</A>)</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif; FONT-SIZE: 13px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px"
class=Apple-style-span><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: arial, sans-serif; FONT-SIZE: 13px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px"
class=Apple-style-span>Basis of record is one of the fundamental fields to know
when consuming content, so I think any effort to capture that at source will be
worthwhile in the long run.</SPAN></DIV><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV>5. There seemed to be enthusiasm for another field event at next year's
<BR>TDWG. This could be an opportunity to gather other types of data (eg.
<BR>character data) and thereby <BR>i) expose meeting particpants to another
set of everyday problems from the <BR>world of biodiversity workflows, and ii)
try other TDWG technology on <BR>for size, e.g. the observation exchange
format, annotation framework, etc.<BR><BR><BR>Happy Thanksgiving to all in
Canada -<BR>Joel.<BR>----<BR><BR><BR>1. <A
href="http://groups.google.com/group/tdwg-bioblitz/web/tdwg-bioblitz-profile-v1-1">http://groups.google.com/group/tdwg-bioblitz/web/tdwg-bioblitz-profile-v1-1</A><BR>2.
Slightly bastardizing our old observation ontology - <BR><A
href="http://spire.umbc.edu/ontologies/Observation.owl">http://spire.umbc.edu/ontologies/Observation.owl</A><BR>3.
http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/<BR>4.
http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2010/10/replicating-and-forking-data-in-2010.html<BR>5.
http://tables.googlelabs.com/DataSource?dsrcid=248798<BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>tdwg-content
mailing
list<BR>tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org<BR>http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content<BR><BR></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></DIV>
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