<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
As one of the co-conveners of the proposed RDF task group, I suppose it
may be part of my job to "fall on the grenade". Actually, I may not be
the best person to respond to the issues that Rod brought up, being
somewhat of a Semantic Web skeptic myself. However, I think that the
question that Rod posed actually contains an incorrect assumption,
namely that anybody actually HAS converted much of any biodiversity
data into RDF. If by "biodiversity data" one means "taxon names",
"taxa", or perhaps "taxon name uses", then yes, there are millions of
triples in the wild. But to my thinking, that's taxonomy data, not
biodiversity data. I'm not familiar with all of the organizations Rod
listed, but with the exception of BCI which is focused on institutions,
I think most of them deal primarily with taxonomic names and
relationships, not occurrences, identifications, organisms, specimens,
events, etc. which I would consider to be major components of
biodiversity data. I certainly don't think that there is any existing
"common vocabulary" that has been used to describe those kinds of
things, otherwise why would we have just spent the last two years
discussing what they mean and how they are related to each other? <br>
<br>
So I would say that one reason why we haven't "learned" much so far is
because we don't have either the raw materials (aggregated metadata
about occurrences and all the other stuff I mentioned) nor the
vocabulary to describe them (yet). Getting those things (or figuring
out how to get them) is one of the points of forming the proposed task
group. If it turns out that after a year we've done nothing but spun
our wheels with nothing to show for it, then maybe the venture is
futile. But I would like to make the attempt first before we reach
that conclusion.<br>
<br>
Steve<br>
<br>
Roderic Page wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:B5FCC02C-2D65-474D-8E09-40D1A98B82AB@bio.gla.ac.uk"
type="cite">It's morning and the coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet,
but reading through recent TDWG TAG posts, and mindful of the upcoming
meeting in New Orleans (which sadly I won't be attending) I'm seeing a
mismatch between the amount of effort being expended on discussions of
vocabularies, ontologies, etc. and the concrete results we can point
to.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Hence, a challenge:
<div><br>
</div>
<div>"What new things have we learnt about biodiversity by converting
biodiversity data into RDF?"</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I'm not saying we can't learn new things, I'm simply asking what
have we learnt so far? </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Since around 2006 we have had literally millions of triples in
the wild (uBio, ION, Index Fungorum, IPNI, Catalogue of Life, more
recently Biodiversity Collections Index, Atlas of Living Australia,
World Register of Marine Species, etc.), most of these using the same
vocabulary. What new inferences have we made?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Let's make the challenge more concrete. Load all these data
sources into a triple store (subchallenge - is this actually
possible?). Perhaps add other RDF sources (DBpedia, Bio2RDF, CrossRef).
What novel inferences can we make?<br>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I may, of course, simply be in "grumpy old arse" mode, but we
have millions of triples in the wild and nothing to show for it. I hope
I'm not alone in wondering why...<br>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Regards</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Rod</div>
<div><br>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium;">---------------------------------------------------------<br>
Roderic Page<br>
Professor of Taxonomy<br>
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine<br>
College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences<br>
Graham Kerr Building<br>
University of Glasgow<br>
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK<br>
<br>
Email: <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk">r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk</a><br>
Tel: +44 141 330 4778<br>
Fax: +44 141 330 2792<br>
AIM: <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:rodpage1962@aim.com">rodpage1962@aim.com</a><br>
Facebook: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192">http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192</a><br>
Twitter: <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://twitter.com/rdmpage">http://twitter.com/rdmpage</a><br>
Blog: <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://iphylo.blogspot.com">http://iphylo.blogspot.com</a><br>
Home page: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html">http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html</a><br>
</span></div>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
postal mail address:
VU Station B 351634
Nashville, TN 37235-1634, U.S.A.
delivery address:
2125 Stevenson Center
1161 21st Ave., S.
Nashville, TN 37235
office: 2128 Stevenson Center
phone: (615) 343-4582, fax: (615) 343-6707
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu">http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu</a>
</pre>
</body>
</html>