On May 16, 2009, at 06:26 , Bob Morris wrote: ...
Elephant wise, there is a case to be made that it is not standards bodies, but rather funded, mandated organizations like GBIF whose job is development of tools and training in their use, even when assistance of the standards-making participants is needed in the technical implementation of the tools. GBIF was pretty successful in that regard with their DiGIR provider, and is well on their way to another success with the Integrated Publishing Toolkit.
I'm sure Bob did not mean to imply that DiGIR was developed by GBIF, or even has an ownership role. The bulk of development work on that protocol was funded by NSF through projects such as MaNIS, Herpnet, Fishnet along with (significant) support from the University of Kansas and many other non-funded contributors. DiGIR was later utilized by GBIF and promoted through their workshops.
The important point though is that, in my opinion, groups such as TDWG provide a (hopefully unbiased) representation of the overall community requirements and direction. TDWG provides a forum where standards and tools to support biodiversity informatics can be identified and discussed (sometimes in perpetuity). At the other extreme, research projects (such as those funded by NSF) generally engage in exploration of novel concepts and collaboration between different groups for the advancement of the science (with some consideration of the overall community goals as identified by community representative groups such as TDWG). Then somewhere in the middle is GBIF. The role of GBIF would ideally not be in the development of new tools or exploring new techniques (since GBIF has rather limited funding), but rather in taking the best of what comes out of the many research projects (refining the outcomes where necessary) and engaging in education and outreach to ensure long term support of the community infrastructure required for biodiversity informatics as outlined by TDWG. So, in a nutshell, TDWG represents the biodiversity informatics community, research projects explore ways to advance the science, and GBIF (could, should?) provide a role focussing on the long term integration and sustainability of the infrastructure and education on its use that is necessary for the science.
Dave V.