I can easily imagine similar conversations occurring every time someone wants to share some new kind of information with Darwin Core. It is a perfect example to illustrate the convenience of having a controlled vocabulary that can respond to change without affecting the published standard.
The recommended vocabulary is given at http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/wiki/RecordLevelTerms#basisOfRecord, which is type 2 documentation in TDWG Standards nomenclature. If we wanted to add a new term to that list, we could do so without invoking a standards process. If we wanted to modify any of the circular definitions already there, or add any missing ones, we could without invoking a standards process. The alternative, defining type vocabularies that machines can use to understand the intricacies of our distinctions, would not be so easy to change, but would admittedly offer much more stability as its reward.
On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Richard Pyle deepreef@bishopmuseum.org wrote:
So....how does one represent a record that is both a NomenclaturalAct *and* a TaxonomicAct at the same time (as I said, virtually all of the former also constitute the latter)? Perhaps this is the solution that I've been looking for a while now -- that is, the basisOfRecord in this case is not really the "basis of the record" (I would describe the basis of the record as a TaxonNameUsage); but rather represents something more like "basis of representation". That is, if a single TaxonNameUsage instance both carries a NomenclaturalAct and represent a TaxonomicAct, then the basisOfRecord could distinguish which of the two "things" that the specific record is intended to represent. If basisOfRecord=NomenclaturalAct, then metadata elements would include all the nomenclatural bits associated with the record (e.g., various Code-governed events, etc.). If basisOfRecord=TaxonomicAct, then the metadata elements would include things like classification, synonymy, included non-name-bearing specimens, etc. In other words, the "thing" is the same in both cases (i.e., a TaxonNameUsage instance), but the difference would be which aspect of that thing the record is intended to represent.
I suspect strongly that the preceding paragraph makes almost no sense whatsoever to anyone other than me (and I'm not even sure I understand it).
Aloha, Rich
-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Gregor Hagedorn Sent: Saturday, October 31, 2009 10:44 PM To: Blum, Stan Cc: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org; Vishwas Chavan (GBIF); Steve Baskauf Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Conflict between DarwinCore andDublinCoreusageof dcterms:type / basisOfRecord
I can't remember where, maybe in one of Rich's examples, I
thought I saw the basisOfRecord for a taxonName designated as: "NomenclaturalAct". I thought that was both correct and precise. Similarly, I think the basis of a taxon record should be a "TaxonomicAct", i.e., a published description or reclassification.
I would favor it, because keeping recordClass versus resource type better separated. "NomenclaturalAct", "TaxonomicAct" would be dcterms:type =event, for unpublished acts or dcterms:type=text for published acts. In fact in this case, the dcterms:type would no longer be redundant.
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