OK, if we're agreed in principle to share these terms in common and upgrade them to meet the more general uses, I propose to have the following terms in the Darwin Core namespace, then NCD can reuse them. The big reason is that we (DwC) would otherwise have to wait for NCD to be finalized, lest we be given a moving target. In Darwin Core we would leave these all as record-level terms, without assigning them to a "Collection" or "Dataset" class.

institutionCode Definition: The name (or acronym) in use by the institution having custody of the object(s) or information referred to in the record. Comment: Examples: "MVZ", "FMNH", "AKN-CLO"

institutionID Definition: An identifier for the institution having custody of the object(s) or information referred to in the record. Refines: http://purl.org/dc/terms/identifier

collectionCode Definition: The name, acronym, coden, or initialism identifying the collection or data set from which the record was derived. Comment: Examples: "Mammals", "Hildebrandt", "eBird"

collectionID Definition: An identifier for the collection or dataset from which the record was derived. For physical specimens, the recommended best practice is to use the identifier in a collections registry such as the Biodiversity Collections Index (http://www.biodiversitycollectionsindex.org/). Comment: Example: "urn:lsid:biocol.org:col:34818" Refines: http://purl.org/dc/terms/identifier

On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 4:21 AM, Wouter Addink wouter@eti.uva.nl wrote:

Dear Gail,

I’ve good news. It looks like the people in the NCD group agree with all suggested changes:

1. Dublin Core recommends the use of the dcterms rather than their

antiquated dc counterparts. Shouldn't NCD follow suit? Specific example: instead of http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/source, use http://purl.org/dc/terms/source.

2. NCD is using terms from the TDWG ontology, which is to date an

unfinished academic exercise without any review. This dependency seems to me to guarantee that NCD will require revision when the ontology is revised. This wouldn't necessarily be required if NCD took the reigns and defined terms that aren't already in another standard (the Ontology does not fit into this category) within its own domain.

Specifically, abandon http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/%C2%A0in favor of http://rs.tdwg.org/ncd/terms/.

3. Reword some of the NCD term definitions so that NCD can be used

more generally for data sets (data collections), and not just for object collections.

I’ve not yet received feedback on this from Roger Hyam however. But, unless he disagrees and comes with a better solution, I think we can conclude that the changes are agreed and that NCD will be adapted for these changes. I am not sure yet when exactly, but I want to have NCD finalized soon (aim is this month).

Wouter