14-Jan-2008 Biodiversity Information Networks Database (BIND)

A database of biodiversity information related network organizations has been created on the TDWG site at www.tdwg.org/biodiv-networks/.

The list was generated by Neil Thomson as one of the outcomes of an NCD project supported by the TDWG Infrastructure Project.  These networks identify organizations that that could, should or are already using TDWG standards.

Thanks to Ricardo for setting up this database!There are currently 47 organizations listed with a brief summary of their ai

03-Jan-2008 NCD Developments in 2007

TDWG's Natural Collections Descriptions (NCD) data standard has seen major developments in 2007, mainly thanks to grants from the TDWG Infrastructure Project (who were in turn funded by the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation). The first grant enabled the transformation of the standard from XML Schema format to RDF and associated vocabulary files. NCD is now fully compliant with the TDWG standards architecture. An XML Schema may be derived from the RDF if necessary, for example to give guidance to d

21-Dec-2007 Chairman's Message

Dear TDWG Members and Friends

As the new Chairman, I'm looking forward to helping raise TDWG's profile in the biodiversity informatics community in 2008. The TDWG Infrastructure Project has achieved much, but ends this month. Lee and Ricardo will be staying on one day per week, so hopefully some momentum can be maintained. Roger will be working on a 'Biodiversity Collections Index' that relates directly with NCD.

As many of you would know, I have a new challenge as the Director of the Atlas o

12-Dec-2007 Executive Summaries

We have done a poor job in the past in communicating effectively to a general audience about our work. The TDWG Infrastructure Project has addressed this problem in a number of ways. One has been to prepare a set of Executive Summaries. Four of these have been done as a trial-

ABCD,Darwin Core,TAPIR andTCS.

 Piers Higgs was contracted to work with the relevant Conveners and I on these documents. Feedback to the Conveners and I (and any other ideas) would be appreciated. There are also vid

03-Dec-2007 TDWG Now OASIS Member

As part of the process required for developing a species conservation status standard in collaboration with IUCN and the Conservation Commons, TDWG has become a Contributing Association member of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards OASIS. OASIS is a not-for-profit consortium that drives development, convergence and adoption of open web services standards for the global information community.IUCN and the Conservation Commons has designated TDWG as the lead to