Hi, I've been talking to Anton Güntsch about the use of NCD and the different proposals about controlled keywords. We came to the conclusions that from an biological point of view we would need an easy way to enter and extract at least the information which collection is a herbarium, zoo, garden, aquarium, mineral collection. Some terms are specialisations of broader terms we had (herbarium < specimen collection). We can model this in the ontology so that applications know that every herbarium is also a specimen collection (or "dead" collection as opposed to living collection?) and simply keep all terms in the schema list. Would that be an option? We will have all the broad terms and some frequently occuring specialisations. for example:

archive library facsimile digital data # what exactly is this? arent observations also data, maybe just a specialisation observation specimen - herbarium - nat.hist.collection # or how you call those dead animal collections in general? living collection - garden - zoo - aquarium

The other option to know whether a collection is a herbarium is to say its a specimen collection and have a taxonomic indication of "plants". For this we would need a short list of very broad taxonomic terms. I think that would be very useful anyways. something along the lines of plants, animals, fungus, bacteria, viruses and minerals. And of course additionally the free taxonomic keywords list. Does this sound strange from a librarian point of view?

Markus

On Jul 9, 2007, at 3:37 PM, Döring, Markus wrote:

I do like the idea of having a very short high level list for a first categorisation. I would like to add "Living collection" and maybe also "DNA samples" or more generic "molecular samples" to the list though. So we have dead specimens, living beings and some molecular (?) samples like DNA, cell culture, proteins and alike. Well, cell cultures are not really molecular samples. Anyone with a better term for this?

Markus

Am 09.07.2007 15:17 Uhr schrieb "Constance Rinaldo" unter crinaldo@oeb.harvard.edu:

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Have we absolutely agreed to merge ctype and pfocus? I still think there is value in keeping them separate. Carol had an idea about Ctype having a few, high-level choices with pfocus as a modifier. The two fields really are different, although it is easy to see how they can be a bit confusing. If we offer the right choices, though, it will not be so confusing. Carol suggested to me: <ctype> " should become a very short, high level list - - only having: Archive, Library, specimen/Object, Observation, Data/Information, Representation/Facsimilie. Then <pFocus> would be something of a modifier. "

Can we still talk about this? I am not convinced that merging them is the best idea. It seems even more confusing to me.

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Constance Rinaldo, Librarian of the Ernst Mayr Library Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA 02138 voice: 617-495-4576; fax: 617-496-6838 email: crinaldo@fas.harvard.edu http://library.mcz.harvard.edu

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"To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall" Thomas Henry Huxley

On Jul 9, 2007, at 5:28 AM, Neil Thomson wrote:

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Hi Carol,

I'm happy that we have the right elements now and a good selection of terms within each.

Just one comment on the collectionType terms - since they refer to collections, then maybe some of them should be in the plural? For example, image should be images. This wouldn't apply to all, for example event and expedition should remain as they are.

Any other views?

With thanks, Neil

From: Butler, Carol [mailto:ButlerCR@si.edu] Sent: 06 July 2007 19:04 To: Neil Thomson; Guenter.Waibel@rlg.org; Markus Döring; Barbara Mathe; Constance Rinaldo; Doug Holland; Wouter Addink; Ruud Altenburg Subject: Terminology version 2 Importance: High

Hi All,

Thanks for your comments. I’ve attached version 2. You’ll see that it collapses <primaryFocus> into <collectionType> (which we had in the past called “collection class”). I included examples for the terms that correspond to this revised element.

As we’re on a time schedule and need to agree on the property/ elements so that Ruud and Wouter can proceed, would you please send me your final comments on 1) the Property Comment definitions, and 2) updated Terms, no later than the end of your day on Monday, July 9th? My recollection is that we needed to complete this review by July 10th. I expect we may want to tune the term definitions and examples a bit, which Neil tells me can have a bit more time as long as the elements themselves are agreed. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll conclude that you don’t have comments or edits on this version.

I’ve also sent this to our wiki.

Thanks!

Carol