best place for guidance

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hello,

I recently posted a question on the DwC wiki about validating DwC dates. I am 
very pleased to see that my question received prompt attention. I now have a 
few questions about implementation, and hope this is the right venue for them. 
If not, I would be happy to hear of a better place if anyone can point me in 
the right direction.

As I see it, Simple DwC does not allow the reuse of fields within a record, nor 
modifications to the fields themselves. I am not sure how to handle some of the 
data in our herbarium data with these limitations. The field "vernacularName" 
is one such problem. Our current data contains the common names for plants in 
English and French. In some cases there are also Aboriginal names as well 
(though only in the print catalogue at this point). It would be helpful for use 
if we could use <DwC:vernacularName lang=en> or something similar so that we 
may keep the data complete, yet differentiate between the  vernacular names. We 
have a similar problem (as I see it) with verbatimLatitude and related terms. 
Our data includes both Lat/Long data (sometimes in decimal form, sometimes 
verbatim deg., min., sec.) and also UTM data. It seems to me that we should not 
favour one over the other, but keep both - especially since I don't know the 
origins of the location data (our herbarium samples have been collected by many 
different people over the last 200 years so there is little consistency).

I am creating a mapping to transfer our data to DwC. The (working) document in 
MS Excel can be found <a 
href=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23721205/HerbariumDB/HerbDBMappingCleanedUp.xlsx>he
re</a>. There's still lots to be done in the Taxon area. I am a librarian, not 
a biologist, and the data is all new to me. I am getting some help from the 
good people at the herbarium, but am quite open to any other help or 
suggestions.

Many thanks,
Geoffrey

Original issue reported on code.google.com by gsal...@unb.ca on 20 Jul 2011 at 7:02

[GoogleCodeExporter]

vernacularName certainly feels like it should be able to be applied
multiple times to a singe thing.   That sounds like the TDWG content
list might be a place to get discussion. 

It is probably worth considering what object the vernacular name is applied to 
- does a particular specimen form a voucher for the use of a particular 
vernacular name by a particular social group, or do you have a list of taxa for 
which you have compiled known vernacular names?  The two cases are very 
different.  

I don't think verbatimLatitude and other verbatim fields have a similar 
multiplicity/reuse issue.  Verbatim, in the collections community, means the 
literal text associated with the source, a single specimen likely only has a 
single verbatim value for any of these concepts, and then multiple possible 
interpreted values derived from that verbatim value (e.g. decimal lat/long 
derived from UTM or from degree/minute/second).  Verbatim should be just that, 
what ever appears on the original paper data source (label, field notes, 
ledger, etc).    

-Paul

On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:02:36 +0000

Original comment by mole@morris.net on 20 Jul 2011 at 8:03

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I afree with Paul that the best forum for discussion is the tdwg-content list. 
In fact, I posted your inquiry on the Darwin Core code site to that list and 
here has been some discussion (see 
http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2011-July/002661.html).  In case 
you don't know about or are not subscribed to the tdwg-content list, you can 
find the subscription page at 
http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content.

Original comment by gtuco.bt...@gmail.com on 21 Jul 2011 at 12:16

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thank you for your assistance. I will take these concerns to the tdwg-content 
list, to which I am now subscribed. I appreciate the advice so far.

Geoffrey

Original comment by gsal...@unb.ca on 21 Jul 2011 at 2:00