[tdwg-content] A plea around basisOfRecord (Was: Proposed new Darwin Core terms - abundance, abundanceAsPercent)

Tue Oct 15 15:35:22 CEST 2013

Thanks, Steve.

Taking this back to the concerns, I raised at the beginning, I think my
concern can best be expressed by the fact that the rdf:type for many
published records is not easily defined (or at least leads to arguments
about whether some of the available data elements can properly apply to an
object of that class).  I think the majority of our records are best seen as
a denormalised view of a join between instances of different classes rather
than as an instance of a class.

Your comments in your other messages about on-going TDWG work on ontologies
are much appreciated.  I would like to see that work carrying through to
accepted recommendations and for the main Darwin Core vocabulary for the
time being not to get distracted by whether the associated records are
Events, Occurrences, MaterialSamples or whatever.

Thanks again.

Donald

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Donald Hobern - GBIF Director -  <mailto:dhobern at gbif.org> dhobern at gbif.org 

Global Biodiversity Information Facility  <http://www.gbif.org/>
http://www.gbif.org/ 

GBIF Secretariat, Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark

Tel: +45 3532 1471  Mob: +45 2875 1471  Fax: +45 2875 1480

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Steve Baskauf [mailto:steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu] 
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 12:45 AM
To: Donald Hobern [GBIF]
Cc: 'Richard Pyle'; 'TDWG Content Mailing List'; 'Chuck Miller'
Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] A plea around basisOfRecord (Was: Proposed new
Darwin Core terms - abundance, abundanceAsPercent)

Donald,

With regards to the uncertainty about the meaning of dwc:basisOfRecord, the
proposed Darwin Core RDF Guide attempts to inject clarity into the
situation.   It does so in two ways:

1. It allows dwc:basisOfRecord to be used with literal (text) values to
allow existing implementations to expose whatever values they currently have
for that term.  However, it specifies that rdf:type should be used
exclusively as the property for specifying URI-reference values intended to
indicate the type of the subject resource. [1]  There is some ambiguity
about what the subject is of a dwc:basisOrRecord property (the resource, or
the record about the resource?).  However, there is no similar ambiguity
about rdf:type which always serves to indicate the class of which the
subject resource is an instance.

2. It specifies that classes in the Darwin Core Type vocabulary namespace
(dwctype: = http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/dwctype/ ) should be used for typing
resources in the biodiversity domain rather than any corresponding classes
in the main Darwin Core namespace (dwc: = http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/ ).
[2]  In other words, if given the choice between dwc:Occurrence and
dwctype:Occurrence, use dwctype:Occurrence.  The guide proposes to add to
the type vocabulary any classes which  exist in the dwc: namespace and not
in the dwctype: namespace (e.g. dwc:Identification).  The intention is that
the DwC type vocabulary would be what it's name suggests: the vocabulary for
describing types.  There are some issues involving the current definitions
in the type vocabulary, which I won't go into in this email.  As Rich said
earlier, this is a topic for one of the Documenting Darwin Core sessions at
the meeting.

Although these guidelines would hold force specifically for RDF
implementations, this is a convention that could be followed in other
implementations.  

Steve

[1]
http://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/DwcRdfGuideProposal#2.3.1.4_Other_pre
dicates_used_to_indicate_type
[2]
http://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/DwcRdfGuideProposal#2.3.1.5_Classes_t
o_be_used_for_type_declarations_of_resources_de

Donald Hobern [GBIF] wrote: 

Thanks, Rich.

Very pleased to see this.  With this encouragement, I'll say just a little
bit more about why I think this is a critical need.

I see the model I describe as the perfect real-world realisation of most of
the key components in the GBIO Framework
(http://www.biodiversityinformatics.org/), as follows:

Everyone zips up whatever data they have from each resource (databases,
field instruments, sequencers, data extracted from literature, checklists,
whatever) into a DwC Archive using whatever DwC elements they can for data
elements and describing other elements not currently recognised in DwC (the
GBIO DATA layer)

These archives should be placed in repositories that offer basic services
(DOIs, annotation services, etc.) (the GBIO CULTURE layer)

Harvesters assess the contents of each archive and determine what views can
be supported from the supplied elements (occurrence records for GBIF, name
usage records, species interactions, etc.) and catalogue these views in
relevant discovery indexes (GBIF, Catalogue of Life, TraitBank, etc.) (the
GBIO EVIDENCE layer)

Users can at any time annotate elements in the archives to provide mappings
for (potentially more recently defined) DwC or other properties, opening up
new options for reuse

Donald

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Donald Hobern - GBIF Director - dhobern at gbif.org 

Global Biodiversity Information Facility http://www.gbif.org/ 

GBIF Secretariat, Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark

Tel: +45 3532 1471  Mob: +45 2875 1471  Fax: +45 2875 1480

----------------------------------------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Pyle [mailto:deepreef at bishopmuseum.org] 
Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2013 6:49 PM
To: 'Donald Hobern [GBIF]'; 'TDWG Content Mailing List'
Cc: 'Chuck Miller'
Subject: RE: [tdwg-content] A plea around basisOfRecord (Was: Proposed new
Darwin Core terms - abundance, abundanceAsPercent)

Hi Donald,

MANY thanks for this!  And you are certainly not alone in your concerns
about these issues.  In fact, we have planned a Symposium for “Documenting
DarwinCore”

(
<https://mbgserv18.mobot.org/ocs/index.php/tdwg/2013/schedConf/trackPolicies
>
https://mbgserv18.mobot.org/ocs/index.php/tdwg/2013/schedConf/trackPolicies

#track11), and one of the four sessions (Session 3, to be precise) of the
symposium focuses exactly on this issue of basisOfRecord/dcterms:type/etc.

Another session (Session 2) will focus on proposed and
perhaps-to-be-proposed new classes (Individual, MaterialSample, Evidence),
and will start out with a series graphs illustrating the existing high-level
ontology and possible alternative high-level ontologies, as you indicate in
your items 3 & 4.

Aloha,

Rich

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

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