The Semantics for Biodiversity symposium at the TDWG Annual Conference has three sessions devoted to presentations related to use of semantic technologies in a biodiversity context. A fourth session [1], which will occur first chronologically, is a primer session intended to provide attendees with the background needed to understand the content of the three later sessions.

The primer session assumes a familiarity with basic terminology used in Resource Description Framework (such as URI, triple, subject, predicate, object, property, namespace, value, graph, node, serialization). If you are not already familiar with these terms, there is an 18 minute video geared towards beginners that explains these terms and shows how RDF is presented in its most user-friendly form (Turtle serialization). The video can be watched at http://youtu.be/XAGifYBiXMY . Additional background information is available on the RDF Task Group's website. [2]. Have fun!

Steve Baskauf

[1] https://mbgserv18.mobot.org/ocs/index.php/tdwg/2013/paper/view/448 [2] http://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/Beginners