clear need to distinguish betweendistinguish between processes that generate a specimen as an output (a material entity) and those that instead generate only information or data (what we call an information content entity).

Absolutely. O&M has two distinct "Process" classes - one used in observations to generate results, and one used to transform specimens. I also have resisted all suggestions that these be merged, since, despite them both being 'processes', the type of output is critically different!

Somehow the wires got crossed in this conversation and it appears the wrong impression has been received. Not sure how that happened.

Simon Cox | Research Scientist CSIRO Land and Water PO Box 56, Highett Vic 3190, Australia Tel +61 3 9252 6342 | Mob +61 403 302 672 simon.cox@csiro.au | http://csiro.au/people/SimonCox

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Message: 1 Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2014 10:54:06 -0700 From: Ramona Walls rlwalls2008@gmail.com Subject: [tdwg-content] Darwin Core: proposed news terms for expressing sample data To: TDWG Content Mailing List tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org Message-ID: CAJYF1k5k=AMKQgK1a7eZ7nyLZtoD+DDcgdFJYoCxm7o=yZy=bA@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Simon,

It is an interesting perspective to say that "the only real reason to collect and curate a specimen is to support observations". Although I don't disagree, this does depend on a very broad sense definition "observation". In the BCO, following OBI, we define the process of specimen collection as contingent on the material collected potentially being used for some current or future investigation. I don't think it is much of a stretch to see the overlap between "use in some investigation" and "support observations", so I don't think we are at odds here.

Nonetheless, as Rob mentioned, there is a clear need (for data tracking purposes) to distinguish between processes that generate a specimen as an output (a material entity) and those that instead generate only information or data (what we call an information content entity). We should probably start a new email thread if we want to continue this discussion on the TDWG list, but I am glad we got your input on this and hope we can continue to coordinate.

Ramona

------------------------------------------------------ Ramona L. Walls, Ph.D. Scientific Analyst, The iPlant Collaborative, University of Arizona Research Associate, Bio5 Institute, University of Arizona Laboratory Research Associate, New York Botanical Garden