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@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@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.