<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Dear Rich,<div><br></div><div>I guess I'd argue the reverse, in that pumping data out with unique identifiers demonstrably doesn't get us very far. We've had "globally unique", "persistent", and "actionable" identifiers for years (LSIDs, URLs, DOIs, etc.) and very little to show for it. In other words, there isn't a biodiversity informatics "matrix" to "plug in" to. Building a "cross-mapping service" is not necessarily simple, again because the individual data providers rarely use existing identifiers for things outside their domain. Hence we have text strings for literature when perfectly good identifiers exist.</div><div><br></div><div>The benefits of the "matrix" come from the links, and we aren't providing them. The notion this is all going to magically coalesce at some unspecified point in the future strikes me as wishful thinking. Someone is soon going to point out that the Emperor has no clothes...</div><div><br></div><div>Regards</div><div><br></div><div>Rod</div><div><br><div><div>On 23 Feb 2012, at 21:09, Richard Pyle wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Hi All,<br><br>As I've said many times before, the "shared" bit is useful, but far less<br>important than the "globally unique", "persistent", and "actionable" bits.<br>As Kevin says, we can handle the non-shared GUIDs (as long as they meet the<br>other three criteria) by simply building a cross-mapping service; but that's<br>only useful to the extent that the identifiers are truly unique, persistent,<br>and actionable (in that order of importance).<br><br>Once we have a real infrastructure that achieves critical mass of adoption<br>for integrating the silos, then I'm sure eventually our community will<br>converge toward shared identifiers (specifically, towards the ones that are<br>most robustly persistent, and provide the best services when actioned upon),<br>and the superfluous identifiers will eventually fade into becoming<br>historical metadata (like NODC numbers in the context of ITIS).<br><br>But without an infrastructure to get people to come out of their silos and<br>"plug in" to the biodiversity informatics "matrix", it's unlikely that we'll<br>ever get to the point of collapsing multiple identical GUIDs into a single<br>shared GUID for the same object.<br><br>Aloha,<br>Rich<br><br><blockquote type="cite">-----Original Message-----<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">From: <a href="mailto:tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org">tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org</a> [mailto:tdwg-tag-<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Kevin Richards<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 9:41 AM<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">To: Roderic Page; TDWG TAG<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Subject: Re: [tdwg-tag] Specimen identifiers<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">I agree Rod, it would be ideal to have unique, shared identifiers for<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">specimens, and as many other types of data as possible.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">The problem here is the "shared" bit. This is what most people hope for<br></blockquote>and<br><blockquote type="cite">hoped would come out of all the GUID and vocabulary work that has been<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">done. But you know how hard it is to get different projects,<br></blockquote>organisations,<br><blockquote type="cite">datasets to really share IDs. Pretty much impossible, so I have moved on<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">from this dream and hope to solve this more by linkages, linked data type<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">approaches instead.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Another problem is what the identifier refers to. As someone (I think<br></blockquote>Rich)<br><blockquote type="cite">said in a recent post, two different people may apply the same identifier<br></blockquote>to<br><blockquote type="cite">slightly different things - eg to the "name" of a person, or to the<br></blockquote>"person"<br><blockquote type="cite">itself. This is another barrier to reuse of shared identifiers.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">You may think that specimens should be very simple, it is just a specimen<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">that you refer to, but there can be subtle differences, for example if<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">someone has data about the accessioned physical specimen and another has<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">an image of that specimen - they could both well say that they are<br></blockquote>discussing<br><blockquote type="cite">the same specimen so give these two "different" objects the same<br></blockquote>identifier.<br><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Kevin<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">-----Original Message-----<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">From: <a href="mailto:tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org">tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org</a> [mailto:tdwg-tag-<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Roderic Page<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Sent: Thursday, 23 February 2012 11:38 p.m.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">To: TDWG TAG<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Subject: [tdwg-tag] Specimen identifiers<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">I've recently written an number of posts on the implications of the lack<br></blockquote>of<br><blockquote type="cite">specimen-level identifiers, which makes it very hard to link different<br></blockquote>sources<br><blockquote type="cite">of data together, such as GBIF and Genbank<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2012/02/linking-gbif-and-genbank.html">http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2012/02/linking-gbif-and-genbank.html</a> , and are<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">also a factor in creating duplicate records in GBIF<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-many-specimens-does-gbif-">http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-many-specimens-does-gbif-</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">really.html<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">I know this is something of a hobby horse of mine, but we can have all the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">wonderful ontologies and vocabularies we want, if we don't have globally<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">unique, shared identifiers to glue this stuff together we are going to<br></blockquote>find<br><blockquote type="cite">ourselves making yet more silos...<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Regards<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Rod<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">---------------------------------------------------------<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Roderic Page<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Professor of Taxonomy<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine College<br></blockquote>of<br><blockquote type="cite">Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences Graham Kerr Building University of<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Email: <a href="mailto:r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk">r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Tel: +44 141 330 4778<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Fax: +44 141 330 2792<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">AIM: <a href="mailto:rodpage1962@aim.com">rodpage1962@aim.com</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Facebook: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192">http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/rdmpage">http://twitter.com/rdmpage</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Blog: <a href="http://iphylo.blogspot.com">http://iphylo.blogspot.com</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Home page: <a href="http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html">http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">_______________________________________________<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">tdwg-tag mailing list<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="mailto:tdwg-tag@lists.tdwg.org">tdwg-tag@lists.tdwg.org</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag">http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag</a><br></blockquote><blockquote 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Its contents may be privileged or otherwise protected. Any unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this message or its contents is prohibited. If you have received this message by mistake, please notify us immediately by reply mail or by collect telephone call. Any personal opinions expressed in this message do not necessarily represent the views of the Bishop Museum.<br><br></div></blockquote></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-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 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 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 href="mailto:rodpage1962@aim.com">rodpage1962@aim.com</a><br>Facebook: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192">http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192</a><br>Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/rdmpage">http://twitter.com/rdmpage</a><br>Blog: <a href="http://iphylo.blogspot.com">http://iphylo.blogspot.com</a><br>Home page: <a href="http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html">http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html</a><br></span>
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