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TDWG/GBIF GUID-1 Workshop Report
by Ricardo Scachetti Pereira 14 Feb '06

14 Feb '06

TDWG/GBIF GUID-1 Workshop Report ================================ The Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) completed their first Workshop on Globally Unique Identifiers for Biodiversity Informatics (GUID-1) at the National Center for Evolutionary Synthesis (NESCent), Durham, NC, USA on Feb 1-3, 2006. Motivation ========== A GUID framework is foundational in facilitating systems interoperability in biodiversity informatics. It meets the need for a universally adopted system for assigning and recognizing identifiers in the domain. A GUID system will help to manage and cross-link the many different types of entities that are manipulated analytically in biodiversity informatics and will improve interoperability with other related life sciences domains, such as bioinformatics and ecology. The Group ========= The workshop delegates consisted of a representative cross-section of domain experts from around the world (see http://wiki.gbif.org/guidwiki/wikka.php?wakka=GUID1Participants) Goals ===== The goals of the workshop were to: * Discuss the requirements for globally unique identifiers for biodiversity informatics * Select an optimal GUID technology (LSID, DOI, Handles or other) * Begin to identify key parameters for implementing an effective system * Investigate the use of a RDF-based metadata architecture for GUIDs * Form working groups to address key identified issues before the GUID-2 workshop Outcomes ======== * Life Science Identifiers (LSID) seem the most appropriate GUID strategy in biodiversity informatics. * The use of LSIDs does not preclude the use of other technologies where appropriate. * LSID authorities must use the Domain Name Service (DNS) to support identifier resolution. (The LSID specification allows for other resolution mechanisms, but DNS is currently the only mechanism in use.) * Although it is not possible to prevent multiple data providers from issuing alternate identifiers resolving to the same data record, the community should develop processes and tools to coordinate issuing of single identifiers for some classes of data (e.g. taxon names). * Metadata should be provided as RDF serialized as XML and should exploit existing vocabularies such as Dublin Core wherever these are in wide use. * The LSID getData method should be used only where it is possible and appropriate to return an unchanging series of bytes. In other cases only the LSID getMetadata method should be used. (This reflects the use of the terms “data” and “metadata” in connection with LSIDs.) Justifications ============== The main criteria leading to the selection of LSID technology were: * The cost-model of DOI. That technology is predicated on the idea that a revenue stream can be constructed for the identified objects, typically sufficient to defray the cost. That this is not the case for most, if not all, of the objects that are likely to be identified in our systems. * The more dynamic nature of LSIDs, which does not require prior registration of every individual identifier before use. * The open nature of the LSID protocol and software stack, and the ease of implementing LSIDs on different platforms. See http://wiki.gbif.org/guidwiki/wikka.php?wakka=GUID1Report for a more detailed comparison of GUID technologies. Work Plan ========= There are still many issues to address before our community can fully implement an identifier system based on LSIDs. The workshop addressed a number of specific issues and developed working groups to address the following issues: * Developing white papers to address best practices and key infrastructure questions. * Prototyping activities. The Infrastructure Working Group ================================ This group was formed to address the key issues regarding the deployment of LSID as the GUID technology for biodiversity informatics. The mandate of this working group is to identify required or desirable policies and infrastructure components to ensure robust, long-term operation of shared GUIDs. The following activities were identified: 1. Specify minimal standards (including tools and services) for GUID issuance. 2. Investigate long-term archival of LSIDs and associated data and metadata. 3. Investigate establishing (optional) central registration authority. 4. Investigate establishing repository for data and (orphan) datasets with GUIDs 5. Investigate the feasibility, existing actors and requirements for a ”Publication Bank” (a resource to act as a central registry of taxonomic literature and its digital representations, including assigning GUIDs to each publication. 6. Clarify the distinction between GUIDs assigned to data objects and to conceptual entities. 7. Investigate 3rd-party annotation and link-out mechanisms. 8. Develop materials to communicate with wider community. 9. Develop best practices for assigning resolver namespaces for LSIDs. 10. Perform review of LSID specification to identify possible enhancements. 11. Perform gap analysis of LSID software.. The outcomes of this group will be a series of white papers addressing the key infrastructure issues. Those will be reviewed during the second GUID meeting later this year. The Prototyping Working Group ============================= Our community must experiment with LSID technology and Ontology Engineering if we are to implement a production quality LSID system, The working group will develop prototypes of test cases to test aspects of a GUID infrastructure. The group will develop test LSID resolvers using data objects provided by each domain, such as names, specimens, and concepts. This activity will also help involve (and train) the community in developing appropriate RDF ontologies, leading to concrete recommendations and implementations. The potential prototypes to be developed and respective Conveners are: 1. LSID resolver for taxon names – developed by nomenclators using IPNI database and an RDF version of TCS-Names – Group responsible: Roger Hyam, Sally Hinchcliffe, Paul Kirk 2. LSID resolver for specimens using DarwinCore (also ABCD?) - Steve Perry. 3. LSID resolver for taxon concepts by SEEK using TCS. 4. LSID resolver for observations by SEEK using EML. 5. LSID resolver for character data by Damian Barnier, Kevin Thiele 6. LSID resolver for images: Greg Riccardi (MorphBank), Bob Morris The taxon names resolver has the highest priority. Prototypes will address one or more of the following (but may not be full implementations of an LSID resolution service): * Hardware and software (including LSID stack) * RDFS/OWL vocabulary for domain * Data mapping between local data store scheme and shared ontology Other important tasks identified by this group are: * Development of ontologies to represent metadata for the various domains. Coordinated by TDWG TAG with help of experienced ontology engineers. * To set up a real live LSID server to perform scalability testing. * A project to demonstrate the potential from LSID-based integration of data for a particular group (Ants) – LSIDs, taxonomic lit, specimen, images, names, sequences from Genbank – Rod Page * To use SEEK Taxon resolution server (alpha) for testing. This group will have 3 months to work on the specified tasks before preparing for the second GUID workshop. Next Workshop: GUID-2 ===================== The TDWG Infrastructure Project is planning a second GUID workshop in late May or early June, 2006. At the time of writing a venue has not been decided. The second workshop should cover the following: * Review of the material produced between the workshops by both working groups (prototypes and white papers). * Summary of the lessons learned in the process. * Identify open issues and devise specific work plans to address them. * Draft concrete recommendations on GUIDs for production systems – in general and for each specific domain (names, specimens, concepts, images, etc). Information about GUID-2 will be distributed as soon as possible. Other Resources =============== * See http://wiki.gbif.org/guidwiki for more on the TDWG GUID effort. * See http://wiki.gbif.org/guidwiki/wikka.php?wakka=GUID1Minutes for the workshop minutes and presentations. * See http://wiki.gbif.org/guidwiki/wikka.php?wakka=GUID1Report for a full report, or download it in pdf format from the following link: http://wiki.gbif.org/guidwiki/images/GUID-1Report.pdf -------------------- Ricardo Pereira Software Engineer Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) TDWG Infrastructure Project (TIP)

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Public working draft of NatureServe Species Occurrence Schema, comments invited
by Lynn Kutner 10 Feb '06

10 Feb '06

Please note that the NatureServe species occurrence data is typically at a coarser scale than observation or collection data: A Species Occurrence (SO) is an area of land and/or water in which a species is, or was, present. A SO should have practical conservation value for the species as evidenced by potential continued (or historical) presence and/or regular recurrence at a given location. For species Elements, the SO often corresponds with the local population, but when appropriate may be a portion of a population (e.g., long distance dispersers) or a group of nearby populations (e.g., metapopulation). A SO record has both spatial and tabular components including a mappable feature and its supporting database attributes. Thank you for your time. Instructions for providing comments can be found at the bottom of this email. Lynn Lynn Kutner NatureServe Email: lynn_kutner(a)natureserve.org Phone: (303) 541-0360 www.natureserve.org ________________________________ From: Douglas Sellers Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 11:39 AM Cc: Bruce Stein; Lori Scott; Leslie Honey Subject: Public working draft of NatureServe Species Occurrence Schema, comments invited NatureServe is pleased to announce the release of a public working draft (version 0.3) of an XML schema to describe species occurrence-level data as reflected in NatureServe's biodiversity data model. We are seeking public review and comments on this version until March 3, 2006. Comments received during the review period will be addressed in the next release, version 1.0. NatureServe is evolving its data delivery strategy to use XML-based, Web services protocols. Last month the NatureServe Species Schema, describing species profile-type information managed by NatureServe, and familiar to many through our NatureServe Explorer website (www.natureserve.org/explorer) was released for public review. The Species Occurrence Schema that is the subject of this announcement is complementary to that schema, and focuses on describing spatially explicit species locality data as managed by the NatureServe network. The data represented by this schema provides a new level of spatial precision not currently available on NatureServe Explorer. Our Web services strategy for sharing data among NatureServe network members and with the broader community is dependent upon the usability of these XML schemas. For this reason, we are seeking as wide a review as possible among our colleagues within the biodiversity informatics community, and especially from those organizations that regularly rely on and interact with NatureServe data. Reviewers are invited to submit comments on either the content or the structure of the XML documents. Content reviewers will want to follow the link for the human-readable documentation. We have also provided a sample document for review, which contains example data in XML format for one species occurrence record of Ardea herodias (Great Blue Heron). Reviewers should also note that this schema incorporates mapped occurrence location information, represented as polygon shapes. In compliance with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards for web map and web feature services, the spatial elements of the species occurrence schema are represented using Geography Markup Language (GML). In addition to the human readable documentation, technical reviewers will find useful the links to the XSD documents. Technical reviewer comments may cover the names of the XML tags, the nesting of the XML document, the structure of the XML schema, and the organization of the GML components. Technical reviewer comments from organizations that may develop applications to consume NatureServe data as expressed by these XML schema are highly encouraged. The NatureServe Species Occurrence Schema documentation can be found at: http://services.natureserve.org/technical/speciesOccurrenceSchema.htm Please submit comments using the feedback forms found at the same location, or via email to: services(a)natureserve.org The complementary NatureServe Species Schema documentation can be found at: http://services.natureserve.org/technical/speciesSchema.htm Reviewers may find it useful to compare the two documents. While the public comment period for the species schema has closed, we will consider new comments as time permits within the schedule for releasing the next version.

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TDWG Infrastructure Project - Survey
by Adrian Rissone 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

Dear Colleagues, Below please find a call issued by the Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) Infrastructures Project (see www.tdwg.org) which has the aim to turn TDWG into a professional standardisation body for our community. I'd highly appreciate if you could take the time to answer the survey, and/or hand this on to others, because this may be rather important for the direction that TDWG will take. With all the best for 2006 Walter Berendsohn (Chair) Lee Belbin wrote: Experiences from and after St Petersburg suggests that a survey of TDWG demographics is required. For example, potential changes to TDWG's name require consensus of what is TDWG's 'core business' and scope. To this end, a survey has been setup to get feedback on key issues. We would appreciate you and anyone that you believe are 'informed about TDWG' in the broader community taking ~12 minutes to answer the 12 questions. The survey can be found at- http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=990991659003 and will close on February 3 2006. Lee Belbin Manager, TDWG Infrastructure Project

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Public working draft of NatureServe Species Schema, comments invited
by Lynn Kutner 22 Dec '05

22 Dec '05

NatureServe is pleased to announce the release of a public working draft (version 0.3) of an XML schema to describe species-level data as reflected in NatureServe's biodiversity data model. We are seeking public review and comments on this version until January 31, 2006. Comments received during the review period will be addressed in the next release, version 1.0. NatureServe is evolving its data delivery strategy to use XML-based, Web services protocols. The XML schemas that will form the basis for this Web services architecture are in different stages of development. The NatureServe Species Schema, the subject of this announcement, is now in public review. A companion XML schema document for describing species occurrence-level data as managed by the NatureServe network is also in development and will be released for public review at a later date. Our Web services strategy for sharing data among NatureServe network members and with external users is dependent upon the usability of these XML schemas. For this reason, we are seeking as wide a review as possible among our colleagues within the biodiversity informatics community, and especially from those organizations that regularly rely on and interact with NatureServe data. Reviewers are invited to submit comments on either the content or the structure of the XML documents. Content reviewers will want to follow the link for the human readable documentation. We have also provided a sample document for review, which describes NatureServe's species-level data for Haliaeetus leucocephalus (bald eagle) as expressed in XML format. Users of the NatureServe Explorer website should find the content represented in the sample document very familiar. Technical reviewers will also find useful the links to the XSD documents. Technical reviewer comments may cover the names of the XML tags, the nesting of the XML document, and the structure of the XML schema. Technical reviewer comments from organizations that may develop applications to consume NatureServe data as expressed by these XML schema are highly encouraged. The NatureServe Species Schema documentation can be found at: http://services.natureserve.org/technical/speciesSchema.htm Please submit comments using the feedback forms found at the same location, or via email to: services(a)natureserve.org Lynn Kutner NatureServe Email: lynn_kutner(a)natureserve.org Phone: (303) 541-0360 www.natureserve.org

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GBIF: ECAT Programme Officer Position Vacant in April 2006 - Advertised
by Larry Speers 16 Nov '05

16 Nov '05

Employer: GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY INFORMATION FACILITY Position: Senior Programme Officer for the Electronic Catalogue of Names of Known Organisms (ECAT) GBIF is an independent international organisation whose overall mission is to work with its partners to provide free and universal access to the worlds primary biodiversity data. We seek a dynamic individual to join our multinational staff and assume leadership in completing the Electronic Catalogue of Names of Known Organisms (ECAT). Upon completion, ECAT will provide web access to the currently used names and synonyms for all 1.8 million described species of organisms. ECAT is a collaborative venture with other international initiatives and organisations worldwide; the Programme Officer is expected to be conversant with these partners and be able to interact effectively with them at a high level. At the present time, ECAT contains the valid scientific names and synonyms for about 500,000 species, most of them derived from the Catalogue of Life Partnership (Species 2000 and ITIS). The goal is to complete ECAT no later than 2011. The successful applicant must have a deep understanding and broad experience in biological systematics and taxonomic procedures, including either a Ph.D. with a taxonomic or systematic component, or a B.S. in biology or computer science with considerable postgraduate experience in taxonomy. He or she must also be conversant with biodiversity databases, web tools and XML. The position is challenging, requiring excellent management skills, such as the capability to work within the scientific community and with other user groups to develop and carry out long-range plans, including the setting of priorities. The individual must also have good communication skills, excellent written and spoken English, flexibility in approaching problems and people, and enthusiasm for helping GBIF to succeed. In return, she or he will find a stimulating and significant programme of work, excellent opportunities to represent GBIF at major international fora, and a congenial work environment with outstanding colleagues from around the world. The post-holder will be required to work at the GBIF Secretariat in Copenhagen, Denmark. The post is available for a period of 2-5 years starting on approximately 1 April 2006. Salary and benefits are competitive. All applicants will be considered, irrespective of age, sex, race, religion, nationality or ethnic background. Full details about the position, and instructions on applying for it, can be found at http://www.gbif.org/prog/ecat/ecat_position.

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Result of ballot on Standards (September/October 2005)
by Adrian Rissone 07 Nov '05

07 Nov '05

RESULTS OF TIME LIMITED BALLOT ON PROPOSED STANDARDS 2005 The following proposed standards were recommended for ratification at the TDWG Annual Meeting in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, during the week beginning 11 September 2005. In accordance with the TDWG Constitution and By-Laws a vote by all members in good standing on final ratification of each proposed standard was required. Ballot papers were sent out to all current members in good standing, for return to me (a.rissone(a)nhm.ac.uk) by 12:00 (midday) GMT on 23 October 2005. The result received up to the originally announced deadline (23 October 2005) was: Members voting 14 ABCD Yes vote 14 ABCD No vote 0 SDD Yes vote 14 SDD No vote 0 TCS Yes vote 14 TCS No vote 0 The poor response and apparent misunderstanding by some members of the proceedures led the Executive to extend the deadline up to 31 October 2005, with the result coming to: Members voting 27 ABCD Yes vote 27 ABCD No vote 0 SDD Yes vote 26 SDD No vote 0 TCS Yes vote 26 TCS No vote 1 One vote was cast 3 days late, fully supporting the three proposed standards. The following table summarises the votes received from the TDWG membership: Total members eligible to vote: 55 Members voting 28 ABCD Yes vote 28 ABCD No vote 0 SDD Yes vote 27 SDD No vote 0 TCS Yes vote 27 TCS No vote 1 All three standards are thus accepted as APPROVED Members in good standing will receive printed copies where the standards or their documentation will be published with the assistance of TDWG. Adrian Rissone Secretary, Taxonomic Databases Working Group A.Rissone(a)nhm.ac.uk ---------------------------------------- Proposed Standard: ABCD (Access to Biological Collections Data) The Access to Biological Collections Data (ABCD) Schema 2.0 is a comprehensive standard for access to and the exchange of data about specimens and observations (a.k.a. primary biodiversity data). It is based on information models such as ASC and BioCISE and incorporates many existing exchange standards. Further information at: http://www.bgbm.org/TDWG/CODATA/Schema/ Proposed Standard: SDD (Structure Descriptive Data) Major changes are incorporated in the latest version of SDD: All object types are derived from abstract base type. ExternalDataInterface grouping given up, all object types, including SDD ones treated symmetrically. Multilingual representation was simplified (one level of nesting less than previous version). The text character facility was redesigned to be expressed differently in xml, the previous solution was considered unintuitive. This involves element name and structural changes, but no essential changes in functionality. The expression of measurement units was simplified, rather than allowing multiple units within a character (which required structures to define units and their conversion methods), only one unit may be defined, which may be accompanied with different scientific prefix letters (k, c, m, ) in different descriptions. http://160.45.63.11/Projects/TDWG-SDD/index.html http://wiki.cs.umb.edu/twiki/bin/view/SDD/WebHome Proposed Standard: TCS (Taxonomic Concept Transfer Schema) The Taxon Concept Schema (TCS) was developed to enable the transfer of taxonomic name and concept data using an abstract model of taxonomic concepts which can capture the range of models represented and understood by the various taxonomic data providers. The model, presented as an XML schema document, has been through several revisions which have been presented in different fora and discussed on the tcs-lc(a)ecoinformatics.org mailing list and the TCS Wiki at http://tdwg.napier.ac.uk where all previous versions of the schema can be obtained along with related documentation. At TDWG 2005 TCS v1.0 was voted to be recommended as a TDWG standard. Minor issues were discussed and proposals for minor changes to TCS are being accepted until 30th September at which point TCS v1.0 will be fixed for the ballot. Discussion on minor changes continues on tcs-lc mailing list and the final version 1.0 will be posted on the Wiki.

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TDWG-2005 SpeciesPages interest group
by Wouter Addink 02 Nov '05

02 Nov '05

At the TDWG meeting in St. Petersburg the SpeciesPages interest group was formed. This group will discuss the needs to exchange SpeciesPage data and might become a formal TDWG subgroup in the future. I've created a WIKI for the SpeciesPages interest group, which can be found at: http://ip50.eti.uva.nl/TDWGSpecies. The Purposes of this WIKI are to gather information about developments and projects which involve SpeciesPages and to discuss the needs to exchange SpeciesPage data. You are invited to use it and to contribute to this WIKI. Registration is not necessary, except if you want to add files. If you know other people that are interested in SpeciesPages, please inform them about this WIKI! Regards, Wouter Addink ETI BioInformatics

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Advancement of DarwinCore postponed on standards track
by Stan Blum 28 Sep '05

28 Sep '05

Advance of DarwinCore postponed. A surprise at the recent TDWG annual meeting was the withdrawal of DarwinCore2 from the ballot of standards up for recommendation. This was done because recent changes need more time for review and explanation; it does NOT mean that support for the DarwinCore has been withdrawn, nor does it mean that we have to wait until next year to finalize the schema. With some diligent work over the next two to three months, we can finalize the DarwinCore2, test it, and begin broader deployment. If you are a current or potential user of the DarwinCore, please note that additional work needs to be done and your participation would be appreciated. The longer version of what transpired in St. Petersburg follows below. On July 10th, more than 60 days before the annual meeting as prescribed by the TDWG bylaws, John Wieczorek and I posted a revised version of the DarwinCore2 on the review web site (http://darwincore.calacademy.org/Documentation/DarwinCore2Draft_v1-4_HTML) This draft incorporated the advisable changes proposed since the draft of October, 2004. We then informed the TDWG Executive Committee, that the DarwinCore2 was ready to be considered for recommendation as a full TDWG standard. On September 12th at the annual meeting, conveners of the respective subgroups presented their proposed standards in a plenary session. I summarized the current state of the DarwinCore2, the changes made since last year, and the rationale behind them. The most significant change was to remove the geospatial elements from the core and place them in a geospatial extension. We did this for two reasons: 1) to follow the emerging best practice of constructing schemas to be interoperable across domains; and 2) to improve the stability of the core by making it smaller. Unfortunately, this change caught many people unaware, and serious questions were raised in the discussion period. These questions and my responses to them are summarized here. 1) Geospatial elements are critical to many users of the DarwinCore, so why remove them? Response: There is broad agreement among data architects, within TDWG and beyond, that the best way to achieve interoperability across domains is to import external schemas (and thereby the elements they contain), for example GML, rather than redundantly defining conceptually equivalent elements in our own namespace, as we have done in the past. An alternative we did not discuss, but will consider in the coming weeks, is whether a better strategy would be to import the GML elements directly into the core rather than putting them into an extension. In any case, we are certain that the DarwinCore, or application schemas based on the DarwinCore, will import their geospatial elements from GML. 2) These critical geospatial elements are now relegated to a specification that is not at the same level of maturity as the DarwinCore. Is this a good thing to do? Response: This will be inevitable if we develop our information domain by solidifying the areas with greatest commonality and defer more specialized elements to subsequent work by appropriate stakeholders. [A point I didn't make at the meeting, but would like to make now is that GML is actually more mature, or at least more broadly deployed, than any TDWG standard. So the elements in the geospatial extension are more stable than the DarwinCore, not less stable.] 3) Can the geospatial extension include the GML elements for lines and polygons as well as those for points? Response: This will need further investigation, but would certainly be desirable in the long run. Another cautionary marker appeared the next day among the contributed papers. Roger Hyam gave a presentation about managing change among interdependent schemas. He described a situation in which version dependencies among schemas could require them to be upgraded simultaneously, which effectively eliminates the main benefit of separating them in the first place. Gregor Hagedorn challenged the generality of Roger's point saying that proper referencing of schemas could ensure the required flexibility. The issue was left open and obviously requires further study and resolution, preferably in the form of a recommendation from a group of technical architects to the groups constructing references among schemas. As the deadline approached to open the vote on standards up for recommendation, both Adrian Rissone and Walter Berendsohn approached me (Stan) separately and asked me to withdraw the DarwinCore from the ballot. Both of them said that people had expressed to them the opinion that the recent changes to the DarwinCore were too large relative to the earlier draft, and too recent to warrant putting the schema up for recommendation as a standard. Although I believe the DarwinCore would have received at least the required simple majority of votes, in the interest of broader consensus I agreed to withdraw it from the ballot. Therefore, at the beginning of the final session on Tuesday I "announced" that we had agreed to take the DarwinCore off the ballot while the larger architectural issues were settled. I went on to explain that in my judgement the best course of action would include the following tasks: 1) convene technical experts to develop an explicit recommendation about how to incorporate elements from one schema into another (i.e., to address the issue Roger Hyam raised); 2) work with the various DarwinCore user communities to determine the most appropriate allocation of elements to the core and its extensions, producing explicit lists of elements that would be available to each specialist community by constructing their schema from the core, GML, and their own extensions; 3) resolve these issues as quickly as possible (2-3 months), and fix the resulting draft as version 2.0; 4) Develop explicit instructions for upgrading providers with DarwiCore2 and begin testing. At the end of the discussion I asked for vocal expressions with agreement or disagreement for withdrawing the darwincore from the ballot. About 10 people voiced support for withdrawing it from the ballot, no one expressed disagreement, and most were silent (perhaps stunned). It was done, and now the work goes on. An architecture interest group is being established and will be announced on the main TDWG mailing list. Roger Hyam will lead that group until more formal arrangements are made. Finally, I want to point out some problems we have had with group dynamics. I was too busy this last year to devote sufficient time to promoting discussion and developing consensus. Things are only going to get worse for me with the need to revise the general TDWG standards development process. Therefore, John Wieczorek and Renato de Giovanni are going take over managing the DarwinCore, though I will do my best to continue to participate. I think passive publishing (e.g., via a web site or wiki) is ineffective if the tempo of contributions is episodic. People stop visiting the web site when activity drops off, and they don't come back unless something is pushed into their inbox. Therefore I would like to encourage stakeholders in the DarwinCore to subscribe to the email list. Instructions can be found at http://circa.gbif.net/tdwg. We will do our best to respond to your concerns and keep the discussion moving. Sincerely, Stan Blum

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International Recorder Conference - Luxembourg, 2-3 December 2005
by Adrian Rissone 27 Sep '05

27 Sep '05

A TDWG member has asked me to circulate this information to the membership: We would like to invite you to the 1st International Recorder Conference - Collating and managing natural science field and collection records in Europe which will be held in Luxembourg on the 2nd and 3rd of December 2005. Please check the homepage of the conference for more information and a download of the 1st circular: http://www.symposium.lu/recorder Theme: European-funded projects such as ENHSIN and BioCASE have helped develop techniques and standards for biodiversity data sharing but there is still a great need for software and standards that can capture, manage and integrate the original natural sciences collection and field data. The theme of this meeting is to introduce field biologists, earth scientists and natural science museum curators across Europe to software and standards that can meet this need. <http://www.nbn.org.uk/information/info.asp?Level1ID=1&Level2ID=1> The meeting will include presentations on the development of Recorder software in the UK and Luxembourg and its associated applications, including 'Thesaurus' software, to collate and manage their data and link to both GIS and web-based delivery systems. The emphasis will be on the development and use of data standards and how Recorder can help build integrated systems for the collation, management and dissemination of information in the natural sciences across Europe. The conference will cover the conceptual model upon which Recorder is based and give examples of how this is implemented in the application, with examples of Recorder use at different levels from the individual naturalist through local, regional and national collation centres. Examples of working systems will be demonstrated and current development work will be described. The scope and potential of the BioCASE / Luxembourg Thesaurus will be discussed with examples of how it is being utilised in Recorder and other applications, including (hopefully) its use for terminology control in the London Natural History Museum. The problems of developing, disseminating and sustainably supporting an international version of Recorder and associated software will be discussed and proposals made for future action. We hope to see you soon in Luxembourg Best wishes For the organising committee Guy Colling and Tania Walisch

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Ballot on proposed standards (September 2005)
by Adrian Rissone 23 Sep '05

23 Sep '05

TDWG ANNUAL MEETING 2006 NOTIFICATION OF BALLOT The following proposed standards were recommended for ratification at the TDWG Annual Meeting in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, during the week beginning 11 September 2005. In accordance with the TDWG Constitution and By-Laws a vote by all members in good standing on final ratification of each proposed standard is required. Ballot papers have been sent electronically to all current members in good standing. If you are a member who is in arrears of current dues but who wishes to vote in this ballot, please contact Stan Blum (sblum(a)calacademy.org) as soon as possible to renew. Othewise, your vote may not be counted at the close of the ballot on 23 October 2005. If you have any other questions please contact me as soon as possible. Regards, Adrian Rissone TDWG Secretary ---------------------------------------- Proposed Standard: ABCD (Access to Biological Collections Data): The Access to Biological Collections Data (ABCD) Schema 2.0 is a comprehensive standard for access to and the exchange of data about specimens and observations (a.k.a. primary biodiversity data). It is based on information models such as ASC and BioCISE and incorporates many existing exchange standards. Further information at http://www.bgbm.org/TDWG/CODATA/Schema/. Proposed Standard: SDD (Structured Descriptive Data) Major changes are incorporated in the latest version of SDD: All object types are derived from abstract base type. ExternalDataInterface grouping given up, all object types, including SDD ones treated symmetrically. Multilingual representation was simplified (one level of nesting less than previous version). The text character facility was redesigned to be expressed differently in xml, the previous solution was considered unintuitive. This involves element name and structural changes, but no essential changes in functionality. The expression of measurement units was simplified, rather than allowing multiple units within a character (which required structures to define units and their conversion methods), only one unit may be defined, which may be accompanied with different scientific prefix letters (k, c, m, µ) in different descriptions. http://160.45.63.11/Projects/TDWG-SDD/index.html http://wiki.cs.umb.edu/twiki/bin/view/SDD/WebHome Proposed Standard: TCS (Taxonomic Concept Transfer Schema) The Taxon Concept Schema (TCS) was developed to enable the transfer of taxonomic name and concept data using an abstract model of taxonomic concepts which can capture the range of models represented and understood by the various taxonomic data providers. The model, presented as an XML schema document, has been through several revisions which have been presented in different fora and discussed on the tcs-lc(a)ecoinformatics.org mailing list and the TCS Wiki at http://tdwg.napier.ac.uk where all previous versions of the schema can be obtained along with related documentation. At TDWG 2005 TCS v1.0 was voted to be recommended as a TDWG standard. Minor issues were discussed and proposals for minor changes to TCS are being accepted until 30th September at which point TCS v1.0 will be fixed for the ballot. Discussion on minor changes continues on tcs-lc mailing list and the final version 1.0 will be posted on the Wiki.

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