Yde,

I fully agree with everything in your post (below), with the caveat that the process of cross-mapping will be DRAMATICALLY more straightforward if we address the 'what's in the name' issue early.

Aloha, Rich

-----Original Message----- From: Taxonomic Databases Working Group GUID Project [mailto:TDWG-GUID@LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU]On Behalf Of Yde de Jong Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 12:56 AM To: TDWG-GUID@LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU Subject: Two kinds of GUIDs?

Dear all,

Considering the last messages.

In my understanding (sorry for repeating part of your input) we can distinguish two kinds of GUIDs:

(1) Universal GUIDs like the ISBN numbers of publications and the GeneBank codes of sequences.

(2) Local GUIDs, which are uniquely linked to objects in your (local) database, however, which metadata and metadata structure is standardised (in our case by GBIF).

The Universal GUIDs we need for unambiguous cross-linking of databases, because we can't match databases efficiently otherwise (e.g. semantically). Indeed in the future everyone should add a column to its taxon table and cross-reference to a universal GUIDs system (=nomenclator) which keep the standard GUIDs for each name (let's leave 'what's in the name' for the moment).

For me its clear that there is a difference between the use of a name within a concept and the name itself. Such a universal GUIDs system doesn't need to deal with the use of names and therefore not with concepts. Actually names within a nomenclator should never change, only the content should grow through time (like sequence data in GeneBank).

Local GUIDs are important for GBIF to show the origin of data. This is essential not only for a proper acknowledgement, but also to identify possible duplications (e.g. Fauna Europaea data sets are being implemented in many other databases, GBIF needs to have a tool to detect such duplications).

In addition those local GUIDs can be used, when cross-mapped with universal GUIDs, to provide concepts for the GBIF portal in a workable way. Meaning that a GBIF portal user can chose which species concept (e.g. that of the CoL) he/she would like to use for connecting the requested biodiversity data.

Kind regards,

Yde