Dear TDWG Content

GBIF has produced a series of documents and supporting tools that focus primarily on Darwin Core publishing. They are divided into three profiles each of which presents a series of documents based on the different content types in which GBIF focuses:

1. primary biodiversity data, http://www.gbif.org/informatics/primary-data/publishing/ 2. checklists, http://www.gbif.org/informatics/name-services/publishing/ 3. resource metadata http://www.gbif.org/informatics/discoverymetadata/publishing/

While you may have seen the announcement of the GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit earlier in the year, we also have developed two additional tools for producing Darwin Core Archives, which are featured on these sites.

First, we have produced a suite of MS Excel templates, currently under evaluation, which are coupled with a web service that processes completed files and returns a validated Darwin Core Archive. Templates exist for primary biodiversity data, simple checklists, and EML metadata. See http://tools.gbif.org/spreadsheet-processor/

Second, the Darwin Core Archive Assistant is a tool that composes a XML metafile, the only XML component of a Darwin Core Archive, for you. It presents a pick list of Darwin Core and extension terms, accessed dynamically from the GBIF registry, and presents these to the user who describe their data files. This allows Darwin Core Archives to be created for sharing with no installed software at all. See http://tools.gbif.org/dwca-assistant/

We would appreciate any feedback on any or all of this as we roll these tools and documents out to the GBIF community.

Best, David Remsen

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Remsen, Senior Programme Officer Electronic Catalog of Names of Known Organisms Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark Tel: +45-35321472 Fax: +45-35321480 Mobile +45 28751472 Skype: dremsen ----------------------------------------------------------------------------