[Tdwg-lit] Boundaries: Levels 1 & 2

[Gregor Hagedorn]

Hello

> It also appears that there is some confusion between what is included in
> levels 1 & 2.  Level 1, as originally defined, is not intended to include
> metadata about the publication.  To us that seems to include original
> language and translation/transliteration metadata which,  while it is
> certainly relevant, might better be placed in level 2 with the rafts of
> other metadata.  We can see an argument for inclusion of certain metadata in
> Level 1, although this goes against taxonomic custom and opens the door to
> adding lots of metadata to Level 1, which seems inappropriate.

Level 1 should be remain an unconstrained string. Although it does not exactly 
hurt to have an optional language attribute on it, I think I agree with Anna 
and Chris in that that start to blur the distinction between Level 1 and 2.

However, if in the case of Literature references we define Level 1 as "any 
unconstrained form of literature citation acceptable in scientific citations" 
then the string may include abbreviated or non-abbreviated journal/source 
information, it may include various other metadata such as "date last seen" for 
online-references, and it may include free-form 
translation/transcription/transliteration data such as "Flora of Siberia, 
Moskau 19XX (in Russian).".

> That does bring up the issue of relationship between the two standards. 
> Should one of the uses of Level 2 be the generation of Level 1 citation(s)
> in various languages which then tie back to metadata in Level 2 about the
> language used as well as all of the other level 2 metadata?

In the case of references, it would be very useful to define level 2 as 
sufficiently rich (in structure and detail) to allow the generation of 
unconstrained reference text according to the various common citation formats - 
a job software like ReferenceManager or EndNote is commonly used for.

Gregor----------------------------------------------------------
Gregor Hagedorn (G.Hagedorn at bba.de)
Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety
Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA)
Königin-Luise-Str. 19           Tel: +49-30-8304-2220
14195 Berlin, Germany           Fax: +49-30-8304-2203