Although this specific example deals with taxonomic name identifiers,
it is related to a previous discussion on this list about how we should
use the dwc:xxxxxID terms and other terms (such as recordedBy and
identifiedBy) that could have either a string (literal) or URI form.
Although I don't really want to see an unnecessary proliferation of
Darwin Core terms, I think that in the interest of clarity
(particularly where RDF is involved) there either should be multiple
terms that make it clear what form of identifier is expected, or else
there should be an understanding that in RDF the default for such a
term is a URI which would then have an rdfs:Label property which was
the string form. I think the former would be preferable to the
latter.
I came to this opinion when trying to write RDF describing an herbarium
specimen. The collector should be the dwc:recordedBy property of the
specimen. Optimally, there would be a database in which known
collectors were assigned URIs so that "Glen N. Montz", "Glen Montz",
"G. N. Montz", etc. would all be different labels for the same
resource. However, realistically, I'm not going to drop what I'm doing
to set up such a database (even if I were capable of doing it, which
I'm not). So I ended up just writing it as <dwc:recordedBy>Glen
N. Montz</dwc:recordedBy> even though I knew it wasn't probably
the best thing. In a large Occurrence database that was compiled from
the RDF created by a lot of people, there might end up being a mixture
of strings and URIs for dwc:recordedBy properties of the specimens. It
seems to me like it would be better to have properties like
dwc:recordedBy for strings and dwc:recordedByURI for a corresponding
URI (and I suppose dwc:recordedByLSID if anyone wants to use it). Of
course, this would require a number of term additions to DwC and
clarification in the DwC documentation that the generic version was
intended for strings.
With respect to the example
<dwc:hasScientificNameLSID
rdf:resource="urn:lsid:catalogueoflife.org:taxon:24e7d624-60a7-102d-be47-00304854f810:ac2010"/>
I think you are right that (with the possible exception of
rdfs:seeAlso) there is an expectation that an rdf:resource attribute
will be a resolvable URI that produces RDF. So
<dwc:hasScientificNameLSID>urn:lsid:catalogueoflife.org:taxon:24e7d624-60a7-102d-be47-00304854f810:ac2010</dwc:hasScientificNameLSID>
is probably better.
Steve
Peter DeVries wrote:
I have been thinking about the following pattern. In part
after looking at the GBIF vocabulary.
I am not sure if it is even a good idea but might be worth some
discussion.
For those fields that have both a string and "ID" form maybe the
following pattern might be useful
hasScientificName = string form
hasScientificNameURI = Resolvable LOD compliant identifier
hasScientificNameLSID = LSID identifier which could be
resolvable once you add the
"http:proxy" etc.
This allows all three forms to be included if desired, it also
provides a hint as to how the field should be interpreted or resolved.
One group could also provide a mapping service so that each
record does not need to include all three forms, but would allow systems
to find the matching LSID for a given URI or vs. versa.
My concern was that it would be difficult to infer how a
scientificNameID should be interpreted by other systems.
Is this an LSD, is it a URI, is it a UUID etc. ?
This impacts the structure of the RDF.
* Note that the actual identifiers might not be correct, the
example below is more about the form of the RDF
* For instance, I don't think it is probably correct to see the
COL LSID as just a namestring
* Also in this example the GNI name does not exactly match the
string name
<dwc:hasScientificName>Puma concolor (Linnaeus
1771)</dwc:hasScientificName>
<dwc:hasScientificNameLSID
rdf:resource="urn:lsid:catalogueoflife.org:taxon:24e7d624-60a7-102d-be47-00304854f810:ac2010"/>
Some system may choke on the LSID form assuming that it uses a
standard resolution mechanism
So it might be best to use this form
<dwc:hasScientificNameLSID>urn:lsid:catalogueoflife.org:taxon:24e7d624-60a7-102d-be47-00304854f810:ac2010</dwc:hasScientificNameLSID>
- Pete
--
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
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