[tdwg-content] NCD and DwC

[Markus Döring]

John, I second those ideas.
And if Neil and other agree on this too, I am happy to do those  
changes on the schemas and rdf files.

Markus

On Aug 15, 2009, at 14:14, John R. WIECZOREK wrote:

> Hi Wouter and Neil (and others),
>
> I hope both of you are well. I know this may be a busy time (or,
> better, vacation time), but I hope that you have had a chance to
> consider recent discussions on tdwg-content about the relationships
> between DwC, NCD and the TDWG Ontology. In addition to those public
> discussions, I'm adding a few questions and comments I have had during
> the progression of the Darwin Core Review. I'm cc'ing those having a
> clear vested interest in resolution on both sides. I would urge you to
> look at the relevant tdwg-content commentary as well as my concerns
> from the messages below so that we can hopefully quickly come to a
> consensus on joint plan. I say quickly because I am eager that DwC
> review shouldn't undergo further unnecessary delays.
>
> In case it's a bit much to go through all of the "literature" relevant
> to the proposal I'm making, and in hopes of facilitating quick
> solutions, I'll summarize.
>
> 1) Dublin Core recommends the use of the dcterms rather than their
> antiquated dc counterparts. Shouldn't NCD follow suit? Specific
> example: instead of http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/source, use
> http://purl.org/dc/terms/source.
>
> 2) NCD is using terms from the TDWG ontology, which is to date an
> unfinished academic exercise without any review. This dependency seems
> to me to guarantee that NCD will require revision when the ontology is
> revised. This wouldn't necessarily be required if NCD took the reigns
> and defined terms that aren't already in another standard (the
> Ontology does not fit into this category) within its own domain.
> Specifically, abandon http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/ in favor of
> http://rs.tdwg.org/ncd/terms/.
>
> 3) Reword some of the NCD term definitions so that NCD can be used
> more generally for data sets (data collections), and not just for
> object collections.
>
> With these commitments, DwC could safely move forward reusing NCD
> terms. Without the last two, DwC will have to redefine terms such as
> collectionID.
>
> Following are relevant message excerpts from previous tdwg-content  
> postings:
>
> -----
> from	John R. WIECZOREK <tuco at berkeley.edu>
> reply-to	tuco at berkeley.edu
> to	TDWG Content Mailing List <tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org>
> date	Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 6:20 PM
> subject	Darwin Core Collection-related terms
>
> I have taken the content of the Darwin Core Issues 32 and 33 to post
> here as they both require discussion before an unambiguous
> recommendation can be made.
>
>> From http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=32
>
> Reported by ren... at cria.org.br
> Term Name: collectionID
>
> Recommendation: Reuse the term which is already defined in NCD (on the
> other hand, the NCD term defined in the corresponding RDF file should
> probably not be restricted to a specific domain).
>
> Submitter: Renato De Giovanni
>
>
> Comment 1 by gtuco.btuco
> This is indeed intended to be the same term. Can you provide the URI
> to the term in
> NCD?
> Status: Accepted
> Labels: Milestone-Release1.0 Priority-Critical
>
> Comment 2 by ren... at cria.org.br
> Currently the URI is:
>
> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Collection#collectionId
>
> But I think that relationship terms like this one should probably not
> be bound to a
> domain since they can be used by objects from many different classes.
> I'm not sure if
> it's possible to change NCD and if the NCD creators would agree with
> this change.
> Perhaps a better URI for this term would be:
>
> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/collectionId
>
>> From http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=33
>
> Reported by ren... at cria.org.br
> Term Name: collectionCode
>
> Recommendation: Reuse existing term from NCD, but I would probably  
> also
> suggest to change the NCD term from
> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Collection#acronymOrCoden to
> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/collectionCode (without a domain).  
> It would
> be nice to know Markus' or Roger's opinion about this, since they
> participated in the NCD group.
>
> Submitter: Renato De Giovanni
> -------
> from	Tim Robertson <trobertson at gbif.org>
> to	tuco at berkeley.edu
> cc	TDWG Content Mailing List <tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org>
> date	Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 1:12 AM
> subject	Re: [tdwg-content] Darwin Core Collection-related terms
>
> Hi John, Renato
>
> Thinking aloud, some possible options I see might be:
>
> a) - omit it from the DwC terms altogether
> b) - reuse the existing URI if the NCD term domain was derestricted
> c) - keep a duplicate term in the DwC NS
> d) - ? keep a duplicate term in the DwC NS and add some kind of "is
> equivalent of" to the NCD acronymOrCoden
> e) - ? keep a duplicate term in the DwC NS and have NCD acronymOrCoden
> do some "refinement" of dwc:collectionCode
>
> My preference is for c) (or if possible e) for clear boundaries of dwc
> and also maintainability reasons.
>
> To me, DwC fits nicely as a set of commonly used terms which are
> unrestricted to domain classes, and extend the terms offered by the
> DublinCore Metadata Terms.  Using these terms we can assemble
> models/schemas etc.  To say DwC now also includes terms from other
> namespaces (which are currently restricted to domains), I think might
> become more difficult to grasp and maintain.    I also wonder if going
> down the route of b) or d) for one term could open the floodgates for
> a lot of other terms (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#genus ->
> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/TaxonName#genusPart) and effectively
> move towards being an "index of data and object properties in the TDWG
> ontology".
>
> Just some thoughts,
>
> Tim
> -------
> from	renato at cria.org.br
> to	TDWG Content Mailing List <tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org>
> date	Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 6:52 AM
> subject	Re: [tdwg-content] Darwin Core Collection-related terms
>
> Hi Tim,
>
> Nice summary. My preference is for b. Considering that NCD follows the
> same principles of this new DarwinCore version, I see no reason for
> duplicating the same term. No matter how much we try to keep  
> boundaries
> clear between standards, there will always be some kind of semantic
> overlap between them. Having the same terms defined under different
> namespaces can be very confusing for users. I think TDWG should try to
> make things as reusable as possible.
>
> To be more specific, I would suggest the following changes to NCD:
>
> 1) Remove the domain from collectionId and institutionId and rename  
> them
> to "Id" so that the URI becomes:
>
> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Collection#Id
> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Institution#Id
>
> 2) Remove the domain from #acronymOrCoden (Collection) and rename it  
> to
> "Code" so that the URI becomes:
>
> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Collection#Code
>
> 3) Add a Code property in Institution (without a domain) making it:
>
> http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Institution#Code
>
> Then DarwinCore or any other standard can easily reuse these terms.
>
> Depending on how this gets solved, yes, I think we should open the
> floodgates...
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Renato
>
> ------
> from	John R. WIECZOREK <tuco at berkeley.edu>
> reply-to	tuco at berkeley.edu
> to	Lynn Kutner <Lynn_Kutner at natureserve.org>
> cc	TDWG Content Mailing List <tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org>
> date	Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:57 PM
> subject	Re: [tdwg-content] InstitutionCode Issue - ownership vs.  
> custodianship
>
> The codes are now meant for any data set (a collection of data), not
> just collections of objects. They were actually always meant to be
> that way, but the descriptions had their origins in the specimen
> collections realm. Specifically, the following terms can all be used
> to identify where data are coming from originally:
>
> institutionCode
> collectionCode
> collectionID
> datasetID
>
> while the Dublin Core terms dc:rights, and dc:rightsHolder can be used
> to describe the original or other vested interests.
>
> To be more clear about what I meant about collection-related terms, I
> would propose changing the descriptions as follow:
>
> institutionCode: "The name (or acronym) in use by the institution
> administering the original record."
> collectionCode: "The name (or acronym) identifying the original
> collection or data set from which the record was derived."
> collectionID: "A unique identifier for the original collection or
> dataset from which the record was derived. Recommended best practice
> is to use the identifier in a collections registry such as the
> Biodiversity Collections Index
> (http://www.biodiversitycollectionsindex.org/)."
> datasetID: "An identifier for the data set. May be a global unique
> identifier or an identifier specific to a collection or institution."
> (unchanged)
> catalogNumber: An identifier (preferably unique) for the record within
> the data set or collection.
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