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 database developers on which elements are required and which may be repeatable.

NCD is now at the stage where it will be packaged for submission to the TDWG approvals process in the first quarter of 2008.

The grant also funded the preparation of user documentation and the use of a subset of NCD for identifying biodiversity agencies from the various acronyms and codens. A database listing sources of information on the Web about agencies that are engaged in biodiversity or geoscience research will be available for additions through the TDWG Website. This will take a similar form to the biodiversity informatics related database. A third database due in 2008 will list sources of information about the several existing databases about taxonomic expertise. If possible, people, projects, collections and institutions may be linked.

An agreement template document has been produced that can be used in negotiation with content owners for the use of extracted metadata for such purposes.

A grant from GBIF was provided to ETI in Amsterdam to create an ‘NCD Toolkit’. The toolkit is a cross-platform database that will allow institutions to manage their collection description records using NCD. The Toolkit is undergoing final testing and interface design and will be available with an installation wizard for the major operating systems. ETI have agreed to run a helpdesk for users as part of their own contribution to this major development.

Roger Hyam has just initiated the Biodiversity Collections Index (BCI), building on NCD and the Toolkit to create a global directory of collections of natural history material. Roger has funding from GBIF, the TDWG Infrastructure Project and The Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. Anyone interested in helping with this should contact Roger at rogerhyam(at)mac(dot)com.

Thanks are well deserved by all those that have contributed to NCD and in particular:

RAVNS - Günter Waibel (RLG Programs), Carol Butler (Smithsonian), Constance Rinaldo (Harvard), Doug Holland (MOBOT) and Barbara Mathé (AMNH)
ETI - Ruud Altenburg and Wouter Addink
Markus Döring (Berlin Botanic Gardens) and Roger Hyam (Edinburgh Botanic Gardens)
The TDWG Infrastructure Project (Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation) and the EU SYNTHSYS project. Thanks also to RLG Programs for facilitating the monthly telephone conference calls between participants.

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