Dear all,

This is an update to let you know that I have just submitted a summary with a request to the TDWG Executive Committee for authorization to make changes to the Darwin Core terms. The specific changes requested are those that have achieved an unopposed consensus on this list during the public review period that began 4 July 2011 (and ended when I sent the message to the Executive today). For reference, the specific changes for which authorization was sought are those having the status "Vote" on the Darwin Core Issue Tracker and listed below:

Issue 84: new term namePublishedInYear Issue 96: new term dcterms:references, deprecate dwc:occurrenceDetails Issue 104: new term georeferencedDate Issue 105: new term identificationVerificationStatus Issue 109: remove subclassing from dwctype:Occurrence Issue 110: remove subclassing from dwctype:PreservedSpecimen Issue 111: remove subclassing from dwctype:FossilSpecimen Issue 112: remove subclassing from dwctype:LivingSpecimen Issue 113: remove subclassing from dwctype:HumanObservation Issue 114: remove subclassing from dwctype:MachineObservation Issue 115: new term dcmitype:StillImage to Darwin Core Type Vocabulary (value for basisOfRecord) Issue 116: new term dcmitype:MovingImage to Darwin Core Type Vocabulary (value for basisOfRecord) Issue 117: new term dcmitype:Sound to Darwin Core Type Vocabulary (value for basisOfRecord)

In addition, there have been requests to add two attributes to all Darwin Core terms to facilitate applications:

Issue 121: add English term label attribute Issue 122: add term alias attribute

For details on these and all other open issues for the Darwin Core, see http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/list.

Cheers,

John