[tdwg-content] To what Occurrence records should recordedBy be applied?
Steve Baskauf
steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu
Tue Feb 16 05:40:43 CET 2010
This is a follow-up to the email that I just sent to the list. It is an
issue that I see as related to the issues I raised in the other email.
This message is related to a DwC clarification given by John Wieczorek
in http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2010-January/000219.html
in response to my post
http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2009-December/000201.html
With regards to John's email, it seems clear to me that the subject of
dwc:recordedBy should be Occurrences derived directly from Individuals,
i.e. those which in the examples of my previous email which have gray
arrows and would have been given "documentsDistribution" values of "True".
That is a more specific way of defining the applicability of recordedBy
than the word "original" in the term definition.
I agree with what John said in his post that the dcterms:creator may not
be the same as dwc:collector in many circumstances, but I think in his
example of a specimen preparator, I would provide the name of the
institution as dcterms:creator rather than the person who was the
specimen preparator. I suppose that could be a matter of preference -
it's probably more important that the dwc:collector be properly recorded.
I'm not sure what I think about John's statement that the dwc:recordedBy
value for Occurrence resources with "documentsDistribution" values of
true should be applied to all of the resources derived from them. The
problem is that if the chain of derivation becomes too complicated, it
becomes unclear what the "original" Occurrence is. What about the
situation in example 3:
http://people.vanderbilt.edu/~steve.baskauf/conceptual-scheme-botanical.gif
which is a relatively realistic circumstance in a botanical garden?
Would I give a dwc:recordedBy value to the DNA sample, and if I did
would it be the name of the person who collected the seed, the person
who planted the seed in the garden, or the person who collected the DNA
sample from the living specimen? It seems to me that it would be better
to recommend that a value for dwc:recordedBy be given for all
Occurrences that would have a "documentsDistribution" value of true, but
to make its assignment optional for any resource where
"documentsDistribution"=false. If users want to know who collected the
"original" Occurrence resource, let them trace the origin of the
Occurrence resource back to the first resource that was derived from the
Individual (how to do that is another can of worms that I will not open
here, although I do have an answer to that question).
Steve Baskauf
--
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
postal mail address:
VU Station B 351634
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