Annual meeting and proposed standards

Stan Blum sblum at CALACADEMY.ORG
Mon Mar 21 12:15:18 CET 2005


[Posted on behalf of Walter Berendsohn]

Dear TDWG List subscribers:

Some news regarding TDWG activities:

* Membership *

To start with the most important: TDWG accounts are in the process to be
moved to the new Treasurer - so please, don't be impatient, your bill for
2005 membership will soon be ready.

* Support *

A piece of very good news in these times of diminishing institutional
commitments to the common good: The Natural History Museum in London has
agreed to commit a substantial part of our elected Secretary's working time
to TDWG matters, an essential pre-requisite especially for the preparation
of the ever-growing annual meetings.

* TDWG 2005 *

As Adrian Rissoné has already informed you, the next TDWG meeting will take
place in St. Petersburg, Russia, September 11-18. See
http://www.tdwg.org/2005meet/TDWG_2005_Intro.htm for up-to-date information.

* New Standards to be voted on *

Perhaps the most important development is that four of the draft standards
discussed during the Christchurch meeting have now formally been submitted
to the Executive Committee for voting during TDWG 2005:

- Darwin Core 2 (http://darwincore.calacademy.org/), "a simple set of data
element definitions designed to support the sharing and integration of
primary biodiversity data".

- Access to Biological Collection Data (ABCD) 2.0
(http://www.bgbm.org/TDWG/CODATA/Schema/), "an evolving comprehensive
standard for the access to and exchange of data about specimens and
observations (a.k.a. primary biodiversity data)".

- Structure of descriptive data (SDD) 1.0
(http://wiki.cs.umb.edu/twiki/bin/view/SDD/CurrentSchemaVersion).

- Taxonomic Concept Transfer Schema (TCS) 1 (http://tdwg.napier.ac.uk)

Please feel free to comment and contribute. The working groups will continue
to improve their drafts until a final edited version will be submitted by
the Executive Committee to the membership by July 17, 2005.

* New proposed standards *

Other working groups will contribute proposed standards, which will also be
discussed during the meeting in St. Petersburg (this is a prerequisite for
submission as a new TDWG standard in 2006). These also have to be circulated
by July 17. Proposed standard should be send before that date to the TDWG
Secretary Adrian Rissoné (a.rissone at nhm.ac.uk).

With best wishes

Walter Berendsohn
Chair, TDWG Executive Committee 2005




More information about the tdwg mailing list