HOW (and why?) DO WE DESCRIBE ?

PEOPLE WANT TO FIND IMAGES FOR THEIR LECTURES (how do I find a random thing, say “a well-dressed man standing in front of a window”)

Note this tag in the source of website where I found this: <meta name="description" content="Picture of Well Dressed Man Standing At The Entrance Of A Church Door For.. stock photo, images and stock photography.. Image 12863921."> * https://www.123rf.com/photo_12863921_well-dressed-man-standing-at-the-entrance-of-a-church-door-for-this-is-his-stairway-into-heaven.html

HOW DO WE DEVELOP A COMMON LANGUAGE FOR SCIENCE? SCIENTISTS DEVELOP A “COMMON VOCABULARY”

Data standards allows all results returns to be in a common format – much like we all know what inches mean

SI EACH VOCABULARY ASSIGNED ITS OWN “SANDBOX” CALLED A NAMESPACE WHERE THOSE TERMS RESIDE

Terms in the vocabulary are community developed. Some have broad applicability Terms from one namespace can be used in others

METADATA USED TO DESCRIBE DOCUMENTS OR DATASETS Dublin Core – 15 elements (examples: subject, title, description) For example: <meta name="DC.Publisher" content="publisher-name" >

SO FAR FOCUS ON DOCUMENTS. What about describing museum objects SO FAR FOCUS ON DOCUMENTS. What about describing museum objects? What can data and metadata standards do here?

To share data, all providers of museum records must agree upon a standard to help enforce common encoding of those data

Natural History Community Has Developed Darwin Core. Darwin Core uses DwC as its namespace

Defines terms/fields that should be in all taxonomic (eg. museum, observation) databases

DARWIN CORE DISTINGUISHES TERMS THAT DEFINE “CLASSES” OR “CATEGORIES” OR “ENTITIES” FROM “PROPERTIES OF THOSE ENTITIES”

Darwin core is divided into classes and properties: Class describes a collection or subset (example: marbles might be “class”)

Properties (or attributes) describe features of classes. (e. g Properties (or attributes) describe features of classes. (e.g. marbles have a size, color, density, material composition, etc)

Darwin Core Classes and Terms

WHY IS DARWIN CORE IMPORTANT TO YOU?

HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF RECORDS ENCODED INTO IT

DARWIN CORE TERMS ARE COLUMN HEADERS IN YOUR DOWNLOADED SPREADSHEETS

Or you can think of DwC terms as keys/properties that have a particular value (e.g. scientific name=Gorilla gorilla)

DARWIN CORE IMPORTED SOME TERMS FROM OTHER STANDARDS (e.g. dc:location)

Darwin Core --- An Immaculate Conception? HARDLY! multiple versions of DwC leading to “ratified DwC” (an offical standard of TDWG) versions included “extensions” that were folded into the ratified DwC Darwin Core terms have grown with each version New terms can be still added to DwC

Darwin Core Governance: Anyone can recommend a new term They need to provide a justification for the term posted to  tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org If consensus is reached, change requests to the DwC project site is made

Darwin Core Best Practices: Controlled vocabularies for some terms Example: basis of record term1 Encodes best practices Example: radius uncertainty for georef. 1http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/type-vocabulary/index.htm

DARWIN CORE IS FLAT (all one to one relationships) How to make it more “relational”?

Darwin Core – Extensions and Star Schemas

Darwin Core (is fierce like a tiger) Most point occurrences in this format Worth understanding the terms and definitions in DwC Not all fields in a DwC need be filled out! Different profiles: occurrence, taxon checklist

MORE CORE: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/simple/index.htm http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029715 Darwin Core Archives (a self-describing darwin core record set) Integrated Publishing Toolkit (a means to publish Darwin Core Archives) More on publishing and software and such soon!