The Joint GBIF/TDWG Multimedia Resources Task Group (MRTG) invites discussion and critique of a draft metadata schema for biodiversity multimedia resources. The represention neutral was commissioned by GBIF and intended to be submitted to TDWG for acceptance along with proposed implementation,. The rationale for drafting such a standard is laid out in the "Non-normative document" linked at http://www.keytonature.eu/wiki/MRTG_Non_normative_document and in a set of recommendations MRTG made to GBIF in September 2008, also linked at the aforementioned wiki page.

Briefly, the metadata standard proposes to extend several existing standards to provide deeper and broader utility than those provide. It seeks to make it easy for media providers using existing standards to leverage their current metadata services with an upward path to greater metadata granularity if they wish. The metadata schema also is designed to support the discovery and acquisition of multimedia resources for purposes beyond the traditional TDWG/GBIF use cases surrounding taxonomic inquiries and the documentation of taxon occurrence. These include use for species identification tools and ecological studies.

We invite participation in the MRTG wiki at http://www.keytonature.eu/wiki/MRTG. It is not necessary to register for that wiki unless you desire to add contributions to it, which is the Task Group's preferred way of recording comments. We hope you have time to read the Non-normative document before commenting. The recommendations document will give the reader some insight into what social, technical, support, and outreach tasks would be required to make the schema useful by GBIF and others.

Thanks in advance for your interest. My apologies if you see this announcement on several lists. Please feel free to forward to colleagues or lists you feel appropriate.

Bob Morris

Robert A. Morris Chair, MRTG Professor of Computer Science UMASS-Boston ram@cs.umb.edu http://efg.cs.umb.edu