Hi Paul and others,
This leads me to a couple of questions about serving TCS data. For example, strictly speaking, ZooBank will be return metadata in accordance with the "TaxonNameLsidVoc" (http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/TAG/TaxonNameLsidVoc), which is based on TCS, but is not TCS per se (ZooBank is concerned with taxon names, not concepts). There is also the TaxonConceptLsidVoc (http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/TAG/TaxonConceptLsidVoc), which together with the TaxonNameLsidVoc and other more genral ontologies, collectively represent the same information as a TCS XML document. I guess that one of the things I'm not clear on is whether RDF returned for an LSID counts as "TCS", or does TCS specifically mean a document structured according to the TCS XML Schema?
Also, what are we really serving when we say we're serving TCS documents? Name-only data is part of TCS, but I wouldn't think of it as TCS per se. I think you need it in the cntext of an "accordingTo" instance. (By the way -- Roger -- I'd always thought of "accordingTo" as referring to a PublicationCitation, not an Actor or Team. A topic of discussion for another day...
But my point is, I've got hundreds of thousands of database records for [Name accordingTo Publication], which each represent a pointer to a taxon concept (that is, "concept" sensu Kennedy, not sensu Pyle). And for many of these, I also have information on synonymies within the Publication (i.e., taxon concepts defined at the resolution of names, which means at the implied resolution of type specimens). What I don't have, however, is robust sets of "taxon concept" records that go into more specific detail regarding the definition of the concept itself (in terms of non-type specimens and/or character data, for example). Also, I don't have much in the way of third-party RelationshipAssertions to define how these alternate concepts map to each other.
This leads to the question I've been meaning to ask, which is "How much information do I need before I call it a TCS document?" I would say raw names data alone don't cut it -- you would need at least an "accordingTo" before you could call it a concept/TCS document. But if all I have as an accordingTo (with no additional specimens or characters or RelationshipAssertions), do I still call it TCS?
Sorry if I'm over-thinking this...
Aloha, Rich
-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-tnc-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-tnc-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Paul Allen Sent: Friday, October 05, 2007 2:11 AM To: tdwg-tnc@lists.tdwg.org Subject: [tdwg-tnc] LSIDs and taxon concepts
Hi all,
I'm new to this list and hope that the following are appropriate questions. In Bratislava, I wasn't keeping detailed enough notes on projects and their current and future plans wrt TCS.
What sites are currently publishing TCS-formatted data or will be within the year? I know that zoobank.org will be publishing TCS data in the near future. Is GBIF? ITIS? Species2000?
What sites are publishing real "taxon concept" data (in TCS format or not)? Conversely, what sites are simply publishing "nominal taxon concepts" as opposed to detailed authoritative taxon concepts?
Is this the kind of thing for which we should generate a survey to send to sites (i.e. their plans for publishing TCS) or distrubute to TDWG members?
Thanks, Paul
Paul Allen, Assistant Director Information Science pea1@cornell.edu Cornell Lab of Ornithology (800) 843-BIRD 159 Sapsucker Woods Road (607) 254-2480 (direct) Ithaca, NY 14850 (607) 254-2415 (fax)
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/ http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/ http://www.ebird.org/ http://bird.atlasing.org/
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