I got a question tonight at TDWG about the advantages of the Linked Data approach. <div><br></div><div>I described one of the main advantages in this blog post. </div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.taxonconcept.org/taxonconcept-blog/2010/8/5/why-linked-open-data-makes-sense-for-biodiversity-informatic.html">http://www.taxonconcept.org/taxonconcept-blog/2010/8/5/why-linked-open-data-makes-sense-for-biodiversity-informatic.html</a><br>
</div><div><br></div><div>As with the BHL example, it often makes more sense to link to related data curated maintained by a group which has that area as their primary concern.</div><div><br></div><div>The alternative is to spend resources replicating and curating data that is outside the main focus of your work.</div>
<div><br></div><div>A related benefit is that the value of both linked resources is enhanced.</div><div><br></div><div>I am not a biographer, and there are often very good articles about significant taxonomic authors on Wikipedia.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The value of both DBpedia and TaxonConcept are increased when I correctly link between a species concept and a DBpedia resource describing a taxon author.</div><div><br></div><div>For many of the taxa, you can go from a URI of a taxonomic author to lots of additional information related to the taxa he or she described.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Respectfully,</div><div><br></div><div>- Pete<br clear="all"><br>----------------------------------------------------------------<br>Pete DeVries<br>Department of Entomology<br>University of Wisconsin - Madison<br>
445 Russell Laboratories<br>1630 Linden Drive<br>Madison, WI 53706<br><a href="http://www.taxonconcept.org/" target="_blank">TaxonConcept Knowledge Base</a> / <a href="http://lod.geospecies.org/" target="_blank">GeoSpecies Knowledge Base</a><br>
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