1. HOW (and why?) DO WE DESCRIBE ?

2. 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”)

3. 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 "> *

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

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

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

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

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

9. 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?

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

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

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

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

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

15. 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)

16. Darwin Core Classes and Terms

17. WHY IS DARWIN CORE IMPORTANT TO YOU?

18. HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF RECORDS ENCODED INTO IT

19. DARWIN CORE TERMS ARE COLUMN HEADERS IN YOUR DOWNLOADED SPREADSHEETS

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

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

22. 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

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

24. 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

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

26. Darwin Core – Extensions and Star Schemas

27. 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

28. MORE CORE: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/simple/index.htm
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!