[tdwg-content] tdwg-content Digest, Vol 48, Issue 4

[Éamonn Ó Tuama [GBIF]]

The best practice that we should encourage is that terms should not be
defined adhoc when creating Darwin Core extensions, but rather come from a
published vocabulary (ideally expressed in RDF). The vocabulary work at GBIF
supported by the EU ViBRANT project recognized this and it is something we
are taking forward in the TDWG vocabulary management task group [1]. 

Éamonn

[1] http://community.gbif.org/pg/groups/21382/vocabulary-management/ 


Message: 2
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:58:32 +0000
From: Chuck Miller <Chuck.Miller at mobot.org>
Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Darwin Core
To: "<tuco at berkeley.edu>" <tuco at berkeley.edu>
Cc: TDWG Content Mailing List <tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org>
Message-ID: <A378AC48-A491-4D38-9CD5-04AD8C941792 at mobot.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

On this same subject, what about the various Darwin Core term extensions at
GBIF that are used by the GBIF Darwin Core Archive Validator?
http://tools.gbif.org/dwca-validator/extensions.do

There are a number of terms being created outside NCD and Darwin Core and
TDWG. What does this mean to the TDWG Ontology and TDWG Vocabularies in
general? Do we need formal multi-term synonymy or cross referencing to
embrace the emerging real world of multiple overlapping terms standards?

Chuck








On Apr 15, 2013, at 10:45 AM, "John Wieczorek"
<tuco at berkeley.edu<mailto:tuco at berkeley.edu>> wrote:

Dear all,

I have been asked to cross-post here from a comment on the GBIF Community
site discussion of "The Management of TDWG Ontologies and Darwin Core"
(http://community.gbif.org/pg/forum/topic/29426/discussion-of-management-of-
the-tdwg-ontologies-and-darwin-core/). Given the subject matter, I feel like
the whole discussion should take place in the broader audience reached by
this list.

While managing the Darwin Core, I advocated not to re-use any term that had
no status as a standard. It was partially for this reason that geo:lat and
geo:long were rejected (see
http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=82). It worries me a
little to see a non-standard term (ncd:taxonCoverage, adopted in turn from
the TDWG Ontology, also not a standard, see
http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/Collection#taxonCoverage) being proposed for
adoption into the Audubon Core (see
http://terms.gbif.org/wiki/Audubon_Core_Term_List_%281.0_normative%29#ncd:ta
xonCoverage). Does that bother anyone else? The alternative, sadly, is to
make up a new term for ratification with the new standard.

So, questions. If Audubon Core is ratified with the Natural Collections
Descriptions (NCD) term in it, does that one term from NCD become a standard
term? Under what governance? What about the rest of the NCD namespace? What
about the TDWG Ontology. A lot of work went into both of those, but each
lost its champions and they remain incompletely reviewed, especially in the
context of all that has come to pass since they were active. I know that
people refer to the TDWG Ontology fairly often in discussions, and that
activity is still fomenting around that work with the imminent publication
of the RDF Guide for Darwin Core. But what about NCD. What should we do with
it? Does more than one person, group, or project still want to use it? If
not, there isn't a lot of reason to go to the trouble of creating a data
sharing standard if no one will use it to share. But if its need is still
alive and active, who can take up the standard and promote its completion,
review, and ratificatio  n?

Cheers,

John
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