Dear all, 

(Sent to GBIF Nodes interest group and TDWG content. Apologies if you receive this more than once)

I am happy to share an update on progress as we start to explore enriching the data model for GBIF. This relates to the work introduced at the 2021 global nodes meeting and at the GBIF Governing Board Meeting 28, which were recorded [1,2].

As described in the videos we have focused initially on exploring case studies relating to data publishing and particularly on cases posing a challenge today when shaping data to the existing GBIF structure.

This case study driven approach has allowed us to develop a process that we feel can be used to explore additional cases. 

We will introduce this work in a series of webinars starting in late January 2022, but we invite you to view the following resources to get a sense of the work underway. 

Introductory document - https://tinyurl.com/gbif-model-intro

Case studies - https://tinyurl.com/gbif-model-cases

While this work has been initiated with the Darwin Core maintenance group of TDWG [3], we will explore the best mechanism within the TDWG processes to capture feedback and review.

We believe this work opens exciting opportunities for GBIF and partners that build on the network of data publishers connected with GBIF. As the model matures, we will explore new catalogues and services that integrate and build on aggregated datasets. We also fully acknowledge that this is only the start of a long process, and would like to offer assurance that existing models and current publishing approaches will still continue to function.

We welcome any initial feedback directly by email, including interest to review and improve the existing cases, and will provide clearer guidelines for providing feedback on the webinars.

Tim Robertson, GBIF trobertson@gbif.org

John Wieczorek, Darwin Core lead gtuco.btuco@gmail.com

Many thanks,

Tim & John

[1] https://vimeo.com/564600741 (GNM)

[2] https://tinyurl.com/gb28-model (GB28)

[3] https://www.tdwg.org/community/dwc/