[tdwg-content] Proposal to create a new DwC term for the class Individual

[Steve Baskauf]

Markus,
Thanks for your input on this.  I agree that working this out in the 
ontology is important.  My major concern is the rate at which this is 
likely to happen.  I had the impression that the ontology development 
was being slowed by lack of resources and the progress that I've noticed 
so far seems to be focused mainly on the taxonomy end.  In some sense 
the ontology has been overloaded in that it must not only define the 
relationships among TDWG resources/entities but also must serve as the 
mechanism for typing resources that have been assigned GUIDs (assuming 
that the draft GUID applicability statement or something like it is 
adopted in the near future). 

[For reference purposes, recommendation 11 of the draft TDWG GUID 
Applicability Statement is:
"Objects in the biodiversity informatics domain that are identified by a 
GUID should be typed using the TDWG ontology or other well-known 
vocabularies in accordance with the TDWG common architecture."]

The adoption of GUIDs by the biodiversity community is already hampered 
by the technical barriers created by the requirement that they be 
actionable and that authorities must persist forever.  So GUID adoption 
doesn't need any more roadblocks beyond that.  I would request that if 
it is not possible to fully implement classes in the ontology that 
correspond to all of the the xxxxxID terms in the Darwin Core standard, 
then either create some kind of "placeholder" HTTP: URIs in the ontology 
that can be used for the typing of GUIDs, or offload the role of GUID 
typing from the ontology to something else (the "other well-known 
vocabularies" of the recommendation).  I do not like the latter 
alternative, but people are not going to wait forever to start creating 
GUIDs and since recommendation 11 is a "should" statement rather than a 
"must" statement, if something isn't done about this soon we will start 
seeing the appearance of untyped GUIDs, which is not a good thing.

Steve Baskauf

Markus Döring wrote:
> Steve,
> a very reasonable addition to DarwinCore indeed. But I tend to agree with John that we should first tackle this in the ontology development which is taking place right now mainly driven by Roger and Dave. Classes in DwC were created in a slightly ad hoc fashion based on what data we were already exchanging - primarily occurrences and taxonomic. So they are not covering all needs. But instead of quickly adding more classes one by one I would hope to get a better overview of required classes first. The current refactoring of the ontology is a perfect oppertunity for this. With the ontology developing we also need to make sure how to synchronise it with DwC terms. I can imagine that it turns out best to add new ontology classes and even properties to DwC once we found them to be stable and agreed. I guess all Im saying is with DwC moving forward a lot last year and now being ratified I prefer to give it a rest and adopt it as is and pass the torch on to the ontology development which has been mostly standing still last year.
>
> Markus
>
>
> Am Jan 22, 2010 um 3:31 schrieb Steve Baskauf:
>
>   
>> This issue is with reference to 
>> http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=69
>>
>> I have proposed the creation of a new Darwin Core term, Individual, that 
>> is a class representing individual organisms in their environment (as 
>> opposed to live organisms in collections which would be Occurrences of 
>> type LivingSpecimen).  The justification for this new term is given at 
>> the link above, but to summarize, this class is needed:
>> 1. to establish the concept of an individual (in the sense of the object 
>> of dwc:individualID) and its relationship to other classes in the TDWG 
>> ontology.
>> 2. to provide a way for users who assign a GUID as a value for the dwc 
>> term individualID to meet Recommendation 11 (regarding GUID typing) of 
>> the draft TDWG GUID Applicability Statement. 
>>
>> I should also note that the problem that my proposal is intended to 
>> resolve may exist for other terms in the new Darwin Core standard that 
>> can refer to resources that can be identified with GUIDs.  In 
>> particular, there may be no existing classes in the TDWG ontology
>> http://tdwg-ontology.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ontology/voc/
>> for GUID-labeled resources that are referenced by identificationID 
>> datasetID, eventID, and locationID .  The lack of an appropriate means 
>> to type objects identified by GUIDs is only one of the impediments to 
>> the implementation of GUIDs in the biodiversity community, but it is one 
>> that can be solved relatively quickly by appropriate action on the part 
>> of the TDWG technical architecture group.
>>
>> Steve Baskauf
>>
>> -- 
>> Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
>> Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
>>
>> postal mail address:
>> VU Station B 351634
>> Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.
>>
>> delivery address:
>> 2125 Stevenson Center
>> 1161 21st Ave., S.
>> Nashville, TN 37235
>>
>> office: 2128 Stevenson Center
>> phone: (615) 343-4582,  fax: (615) 343-6707
>> http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
>>
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>>     
>
> .
>
>   

-- 
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences

postal mail address:
VU Station B 351634
Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.

delivery address:
2125 Stevenson Center
1161 21st Ave., S.
Nashville, TN 37235

office: 2128 Stevenson Center
phone: (615) 343-4582,  fax: (615) 343-6707
http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu

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