Dear All
Sorry for coming in so late into the discussion in this list
– I have a bit of catching up to do….but have been reading the
listings on this Topic with great interest and agreeing with much of what has
been said by everyone but still seeing misunderstandings or disagreements
between people on what we mean and what we should do which is inevitable given
that people have different reasons for wanting GUIDs etc.
To summarise my take on what’s been said and if I
misquote anyone please forgive me and feel free to correct me….
I agree with Donald (and Rich) about needing Taxon_Name_GUIDs
and Taxon_Concept_GUIDs.
I agree with Donald that a shorthand to referring to a Taxon_Concept
is the combination of Taxon_Name and the Taxon_Publication. This is slightly but
importantly different to Rich here in that the publication should be seen as a taxonomic
publication (for another discussion elsewhere) rather than any publication –
i.e. not simply usage of a name which could include an observation or
identification – this interpretation opens up Taxonomic_Concepts
too widely to cover potential taxa rather than those which have been defined, described
and published in some scientific manner.)
I agree with the principle that GUIDs do not have to be issued
from a central repository BUT….
I do not agree that we should be issuing GUIDs for every
taxonomic record – be that for Taxonomic_Name or Taxonomic_Concept. There
needs to be some control – even if the control is self imposed.
I agree with Sally that we should have Nomenclators provide
GUIDs for Taxon_Names but would be more strict and say that these names should
have only one GUID and that the GUID should always resolve to exactly the same
name. So IPNI would be plant names, Index fugorum fungi names, zoobank when
available animal names etc. and that we should share the resource of fixing
this rather than duplicating effort (if I had any resource to give;-) ) IPNI
and IF wouldn’t overlap in names.
I agree that anyone should be able to assign GUIDs but for their
“own”
Taxonomic_Concepts, (so for example a provider like say Mammal species of the
world (or Bergey’s manual for bacteria) which has well described concepts,
could issue GUIDs for all of the concepts they recognise and other users of concepts
could use their GUID in their database to record observations etc if they
agreed with their concept. If they didn’t agree with the MSW concept they
could publish their own Taxonomic_Concept and GUID and relate it to some MSW Taxonomic_Concept
GUID) BUT….
I would argue that we should try to avoid generating GUIDs
multiple times for legacy concepts. For example, as mentioned by Rich the
original descriptions of names are original concepts – we wouldn’t
want ITIS, GBIF, Species 2000, SEEK and whomever else creating different GUIDS
of their own to represent this concept if possible or we would never move towards
knowing we’re talking about the same thing (- how this might be managed
is probably for another discussion topic).
I agree with Rod to the extent that moving forward with a
distributed GUID publication system is easy where providers publish GUIDs for their
own digital objects BUT….
I don’t think it’s helpful or in the spirit of
GUIDs to take a digital object and republish it with another GUID without
managing the replication of the GUIDs for the object – which could effectively
be what happens if every data provider just issues GUIDs for the data they hold
which is effectively the same as what someone else has already published. I
think we do want to move towards reuse of GUIDs as much as possible and therefore
sharing of work and easier and more accurate data integration. Also, what’s
the point of having millions of unique GUIDs if I don’t know which one to
put in “my” database to represent the Taxon_Name or Taxonomic_Concept
I want to refer to? Rod would suggest this be self selecting (use your
favourite provider, or the one you’re told to – but I don’t think
it’s that simple and doesn’t get us towards a good solution –
unless the one you’re told to use does it properly!)
I don’t agree with Rod that we should do only purely
nomenclatural mappings – as for most of the projects I’m involved with
and people I’ve spoken to this will not solve their problems – we do
need to know what the name means. However nomenclatural mapping is useful and a
part of solving the overall problem.
I agree with Rod that GUIDs will not solve all our problems
but if managed and planned in a sensible way they will help us on our way to
solving the problem.
What providers of GUIDs need to decide is what they are
providing a GUID for – in our area is it a Taxon_Name, a
Taxonomic_Concpet, a Taxonomic_Observation, a Specimen, a Description (of a
specimen or Taxonomic_Concept), a Taxonomic_Publication or whatever. Each of
these things can probably refer to some to the other things and these should be
using GUIDs.
For example if you’re an ecologist you might record
survey data and issue-
a GUID for a Taxonomic_Observation which contains
a GUID to a Taxonomic_Concept which contains
a GUID to a
Taxonomic_Name which in turn will contain
a GUID to a
Specimen – the type specimen
a GUID to a
Taxonomic_Name maybe the basionym
a Description which
in turn will contain
GUIDs to the
Specimen(s) or Taxonomic_Concept described
The ecologist may only want to know about their observation
of the Taxonomic_Concept and not concern themselves with the embedded detail. So
hopefully you’ll see that we really want commonality in usage of GUIDs as
much as possible so I think we need to think a bit about how we manage this –
possibly another topic for discussion and certainly one that GBIF could lead.
I agree with Rod the idea of a local GUID as being nonsensical
– GUID meaning Globally Unique Identifier. The issue is about global uniqueness
and resolvability which are separate things but related in this discussion. And
as Rod says about whether we mean the same thing. Now as Rod says sorting out
the name part is a huge step forward I think sorting out the Concept part is a
bigger step forward – but won’t EVER solve the issue of whether or
not someone identified something properly or whether they’re thinking the
same as me but if we have Taxonomic_Concepts (with GUIDs) we’re nearer to
knowing what we mean. Isn’t this what the semantic web people are saying –
you can’t assume that because the name is the same we’re talking
about the same thing….. So I do believe we need Taxonomic_Concepts and Taxonomic_Names
and all we’re trying to do is sort out the terminology and semantics for
what concepts of organisms exist or have existed in the world.
Jessie
Prof. J B Kennedy
School of Computing
EH10 5DT
Tel: +44 (0)131 455 2772
Fax: +44 (0)131 455 2727
Email: j.kennedy@napier.ac.uk
WWW: http://www.soc.napier.ac.uk/jessie