I have finished setting up an LSID authority for Index Fungorum names. For more details about this task, see the wiki at http://wiki.gbif.org/guidwiki/wikka.php?wakka=LSIDResolverForTaxonNamesIF An example lsid is urn:lsid:indexfungorum.org:Names:213645. More LSIDs can be found by searching the indexfungorum names on the IF web site http://www.indexfungorum.org.

The authority currently serves up exactly the same basic xml that is served by the IF web service (see http://www.indexfungorum.org/Names/IndexFungorumLSIDs.htm). The same xml is returned for both the metadata and the data at this stage - the LSID data will change later to something that we decide is the "unchangeable set of bytes" for a particular taxon name. As the return format is not RDF, this means that the metadata and data returned is not viewable by using IE Launchpad. However if you use launchpad it saves the metadata to the cache directory and you can view this file. The plugin for Firefox seems a little more verbose and allows you to save the data and metadata to a location of your choice when downloading the LSID info. Go to http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=130827 for Firefox plugin.

The next step will be to return a more usefule format - RDF based on the TCS schema seems to be the desired option. I'm not sure how to approach this if anyone has any suggestions (ie the RDF version of TCS)? As it is a prototype, I could add "dummy" RDF predicates for the TCS elements required for an IF name, eg "http://www.tdwg.org/schemas/tcs/1.01/ScientificName/Simple", or create real temprary ones such as "urn:lsid:indexfungorum.org:predicates:123" specifically for IF. Anyone with more RDF experience have any suggestions?

Kevin Richards

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