November 2009 - tdwg-content

DwC Basis of Record & dcterms:type
by Roger Hyam 09 Dec '09

09 Dec '09

I apologise if I come to this debate a little late but prompted by John and my renewed interest in the TDWG Ontology I feel I should. I have several short points. I hope I am not out of scope not being fully conversant with the debate so far. Generally we judge the class of an object by its properties. i.e. If it walks like a duck and quacks it is probably a duck (apologies to ornithologists) The sender and receiver often have a different classification systems for messages. e.g. Published specimen data is often(perhaps usually) received and treated as occurrence data. I assume DwC is an generic way for marking up messages rather than a full blown ontology. The basisOfRecord and dcterms:type should therefore be thought of as hints on how to interpret a record rather than declarations of class membership. Class membership is decided by the receiver. An "unmissable special offer" to the sender may be a "useful fire lighter" to the receiver. dcterms:type is used by the world and so should probably contain a generic term for systems/people who don't understand basisOfRecord. basisOfRecord should contain anything that is well defined in natural language. I suppose I am saying I don't understand the problem. Can some one summarise it? Thanks, Roger

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FW: Public Review of GUID and LSID Applicability Statement
by Richardson, Ben 22 Nov '09

22 Nov '09

Hi Just a reminder that the Public Review is shortly to close, and that your input is welcomed on the Applicability Statement. (The dates noted below for the review period should state 26th October till at least 26th November, so you still have time.) Thank you to those who have already commented. Cheers, Ben ________________________________ From: Richardson, Ben Sent: Monday, 26 October 2009 14:49 To: tdwg(a)lists.tdwg.org Cc: tdwg-content(a)lists.tdwg.org; tdwg-tag(a)lists.tdwg.org; taxacom(a)mailman.nhm.ku.edu Subject: Public Review of GUID and LSID Applicability Statement TDWG is pleased to announce the commencement of the Public Review of the Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) and Life Sciences Identifier (LSID) Applicability Statements. Applicability Statements provide guidance for use of external standards within the TDWG domain. The GUID statement provides general recommendations and the LSID one covers the specific GUID currently recommended by TDWG. Since being officially submitted, the Applicability Statements have undergone a peer review, a review by the TDWG Executive and multiple revisions. Open Invitation: We invite all who may contribute and/or consume biodiversity information to examine this proposed applicability statement during the Public Review period from 23rd October till at least 23rd November 2009. How to Participate: You can participate in the review of the GUID-LSID AS in two ways; either through lodging a comment through TDWG’s Open Journal System, or you can take the Microsoft Word document and edit it with track changes and resubmit it to the GUID-LSID AS Wiki space. You can post comments to the Open Journal System (which may be anonymous) at http://www.tdwg.org/stdtrack/article/view/150. The abstract is displayed and on the right hand side of the page is a link to add a comment. Please note: you must be registered and logged in to the TDWG web site to post a comment, however registration is free. Down the bottom of the page, there is a link to download the complete applicability statement. You can also comment direct in a copy of the document as follows: · At the previous URL, download a copy of the Microsoft Word format document. · Once you have downloaded it, turn on track changes and make your notes and comments. · Submit that file at http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/GUID/GUIDAndLSIDASReview. Please DO NOT add any comments to the Wiki page, comment only through the two methods outlined above. Questions about the process should be directed to me at ben(dot)richardson(at)dec.wa.gov.au. Please share this opportunity for public comment and review with others you think may be interested. Acknowledgements: I’d like to thank the authors, the anonymous reviewers and the members of the Executive Committee for their contribution to the document. In addition, the guidance of Lee Belbin through the review process has been invaluable and greatly appreciated. Links: · GUID and LSID AS comment area in OJS http://www.tdwg.org/stdtrack/article/view/150. · LSID Wiki space: http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/GUID/GUIDAndLSIDASReview · LSID Resolution Project home page: http://lsids.sourceforge.net/ · LSID Specification: http://lsids.sourceforge.net/quick-links/lsid-spec/ Please accept my apology if you’ve received this multiple times from various mailing lists. Regards, Ben Richardson This email, together with any attachments, is intended for the addressee only. It may contain confidential or privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, please notify the sender, delete the email and attachments from your system and destroy any copies you may have taken of the email and its attachments. Duplication or further distribution by hardcopy, by electronic means or verbally is not permitted without permission.

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subgenus as part of higherClassification
by Gail Kampmeier 08 Nov '09

08 Nov '09

How would you expect to find a subgenus, which in the term subgenus is combined with its genus for disambiguating homonymies, when you cite it as part of the higherClassification? Do you cite it as you do in the term for subgenus or "naked"? Aphis (Aphis) glycines <dwc:higherClassification>Animalia;Arthropoda;Insecta;Hemiptera;Sternorr hyncha;Aphidoidea;Aphididae;Aphis;Aphis (Aphis)</ dwc:higherClassification> or <dwc:higherClassification>Animalia;Arthropoda;Insecta;Hemiptera;Sternorr hyncha;Aphidoidea;Aphididae;Aphis;Aphis</dwc:higherClassification> considering that there are about 4 other possible ranks in between the subgenus and species? Thanks! Gail * * * * * * * "Indecision may or may not be my problem." --- Jimmy Buffett Gail E. Kampmeier Sr. Research Entomologist Illinois Natural History Survey Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Box 5 NSRC, MC-637 1101 W. Peabody, Urbana, IL 61801 USA ph. 217-333-2824 fax 217-244-1707 email: gkamp(a)illinois.edu **note change** http://www.inhs.illinois.edu/~gkamp/ * * * * * * *

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[tdwg-spm] Draft agenda on TDWG Wiki for SPM working session
by Cynthia Parr 03 Nov '09

03 Nov '09

Here is a preliminary agenda for the SPM I working session at TDWG on Tuesday, 1100-1230: http://bit.ly/37ZFiO I am in the process of recruiting relevant people to lead some of these discussion items. Please feel free to volunteer. I'm especially wondering if anybody has experience taking a TDWG standard through the ratification process, as we will need your guidance. If you plan to attend and want to add something to the agenda, please email me. If you have any background material relevant to the discussion items, you are invited to add it yourself to the wiki whether you will be attending the session or not. Also, feel free to start discussion on this mailing list before the session. I will be adding to the background material over the next couple of days and will bring hard copies to the session. Even if you don't have a chance to review it in advance, you are welcome to attend the session. We have more than 30 people who have expressed interest so it should be a lively hour and a half! Cyndy -- Cynthia Sims Parr Director of the Species Pages Group Encyclopedia of Life http://www.eol.org Office: 202.633.8730 Fax: 202.633.8742 parrc(a)si.edu Mailing address: National Museum of Natural History P.O. Box 37012 MRC 106 Washington, DC 20013-7012

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Conflict between DarwinCore and DublinCore usage of dcterms:type / basisOfRecord
by Gregor Hagedorn 01 Nov '09

01 Nov '09

Dear John we (Gregor Hagedorn, Bob Morris, Steve Baskauf) realize that the public review period for DarwinCore (DwC) is over, but we believe we need to bring a potentially highly problematic issue to your attention. This issue has been found originally by Steve Baskauf. Essentially, it is an issue that is not very appearant when reading DarwinCore for review, but detected when trying to implement it in combination with other technologies. Steve describes the problem on: http://www.keytonature.eu/wiki/MRTGv08_Type_term_inconsistent_with_DwC DarwinCore seems to use dcterms:type in a way that is inconsistent with the DublinCore (DC) recommendations for publication artifacts, which is the way most users of DC are likely to use dcterms:type. Steve pointed out that MRTG's use, which does follow the DC recommendation, is inconsistent with DwC. We believe that this is not a problem of MRTG; the problem equally occurs, e. g., where natural history collections collaborate with the culture and library initative Europeana.eu, which equally uses DublinCore type in the original sense. DublinCore dcterms:type has an explicit type vocabulary: http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#terms-type whose annotations says: "Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary such as the DCMI Type Vocabulary [DCMITYPE]." This vocabulary: http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-type-vocabulary/ defines values like StillImage, Sound, MovingImage, Text. In contrast, the DwC type vocabulary acts on an abstract level of recording occurrences that are independent of physical records. These occurrences can then be vouchered by physical resources like specimens, photos, movies, etc. The actual resources treated in DublinCore are therefore only potential vouchers for a DarwinCore resource. The terms recommended for DublinCore "type" are therefore expected in the DarwinCore "basisOfRecord" property. We do not mean to imply that there is anything wrong with the DarwinCore perspective. Unfortunately, we believe that DarwinCore cannot coexist with DublinCore data, as long as DarwinCode does not define its own dwc:type/dwc:abstractType property. ------------- Test case: An image showing a taxon observation shall be documented both in DarwinCore and DublinCore. DarwinCore prescribes or recommends dcterms:type=Occurrence, plus: basisOfRecord:StillImage. DublinCore recommends dcterms:type=StillImage. ------------- We have internally begun to discuss possible solutions. In DublinCore, dcterms:type does not express a particular type of metadata record, but is metadata about the underlying resource. We therefore consider replacing the DwC use of dcterms:type with something in the dwc namespace, and replacing dwc:basisOfRecord with dcterms:type as an option that minimizes the necessary design changes in DwC. We can see some other issues arise that depend on how one tries to bring DwC into closer coherence with the DublinCore recommendations, but perhaps these are best put forth on a wiki. Here we would like only to point out that we believe that the values for basisOfRecord fit into the dcterm:type vocabulary. Observations (dwc:HumanObservation and dwc:MachineObservation) may be placed as subtypes of http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Event. and specimens (dwc:PreservedSpecimen, dwc:FossilSpecimen, dwc:LivingSpecimen) as subtypes of http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/PhysicalObject. For different communities, the dwc specimen types may have to be further subtyped as "Seed", "TissueSample", "DNA_Sample". However, we believe it is not possible to create a hierarchy like "StillImage - isSubtypeOf - Image - isSubtypeOf - Occurrence" because this is a use-case dependent view: A character image may be a subtype of a taxon representation, and it may or may not be a subtype of an occurrence representation. ------------- Best wishes Gregor, Bob, Steve -- --------------------------------- Dr. Gregor Hagedorn Heinrich-Seidel-Str. 2 12167 Berlin skype: g.hagedorn This message is sent on a personal basis and does not constitute an activity of the German Federal Government or its research institutions. Together with any attachments, this message is intended only for the person to whom it is addressed and may not be redistributed or published without permission.

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