[tdwg-content] Occurrences, Organisms, and CollectionObjects: a review

[John Wieczorek]

I am fine with the idea that the CollectionObject can be evidence for
anything, I may have been projecting or misinterpreting what others
said. Can you recommend a better definition than the one I provided?

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 8:54 PM, Steve Baskauf
<steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
> As one of the primary brawlers on this topic, I've already said enough about
> it, so I will restrain myself and just say that I fully support the
> proposal.
>
> Well, mostly restrain myself...  I will make one comment about what John
> said below.  Although it is true that a CollectionObject (or "evidence")
> would probably need to have been derived from an organism to be relevant in
> the Darwin Core context, there is no reason why a CollectionObject cannot
> simultaneously serve as evidence that the Organism existed, that an
> Occurrence occurred, and as support for an Identification.  Particularly in
> the case of specimens, it is likely that the CollectionObject will usually
> serve all three purposes at once.  A CollectionObject could actually serve
> as "evidence" for anything you want.  To some extent, that's one of the
> reasons for decoupling PreservedSpecimen from Occurrence.
>
> For more pontification on this subject, I will refer to
> http://code.google.com/p/darwin-sw/wiki/ClassToken (where Token is
> equivalent to what John is calling CollectionObject).  The first figure on
> the page illustrates diagramatically what I said in the paragraph above.
>
> Steve
>
> John Wieczorek wrote:
>>
>> and exclusion has been voiced. The basic idea is to use this class to
>> cover information that could be considered "persistent evidence" that
>> an organism occurred, and that the concept is distinct from both
>> "Organism" and Occurrence. Evidence might include collection-based
>> materials, digital media, written materials, and literature.
>>
>> "Evidence" may be a bit vague as a name for the class, providing no
>> real indication that the "Evidence" should apply to an "Organism"
>> rather than to an Occurrence, Taxon, Identification, or any other
>> class. Nor does it convey the idea that the evidence should be
>> persistent. "PersistentEvidenceThatAnOrganismExisted" gets the idea
>>
>
> --
> Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
> Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
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