Welcome to Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG)
Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) is an international not-for-profit group that develops standards and protocols for sharing biodiversity data. Read more
Basic Recommendations
The most widely deployed formats for biodiversity occurrence data are Darwin Core (wiki) and ABCD (wiki). New deployments of these and other XML based formats should use the TAPIR exchange protocol.
The TDWG community's priority is the deployment of Life Science Identifiers (LSID), the preferred Globally Unique Identifier technology and transitioning to RDF encoded metadata as defined by a set of simple vocabularies. All new projects should address the need for tagging their data with LSIDs and consider the use or development of appropriate vocabularies.
TDWG's activities within the biodiversity informatics domain can be found in the Activities section of this website.
Please consider becoming a member. TDWG needs people with IT skills to develop effective standards for sharing biodiversity data. We need biologists, taxonomists, zoologists, geoscientists, librarians and anyone dealing with biodiversity information. We need institutional members that could use our standards to ensure that what we develop will save you time and money.
There are three ways to join TDWG-
- Free registration - Required to access TDWG online resources
- Individual Membership - US$75/year
- Institutional Membership - US$500/year but US$400 if paid before March 1, 2008
Institutional members are entitled to up to five discounted registrations at the annual conference. Please visit the Membership page for more details.
Latest News
26-Nov-2007 TDWG Endorses the Principles of the Conservation Commons
The TDWG Executive Committee endorsed the Principles of the Conservation Commons in Bratislava in September - see www.conservationcommons.org/section.php. This decision was prompted by the two...
23-Nov-2007 Data Standards – The Future for TDWG?
What are "Data Standards" and why do we need them?
22-Nov-2007 Membership of TDWG
As I said in a presentation in Bratislava, TDWG must build its membership if it is to be taken seriously in biodiversity informatics. Membership is very small considering that we currently have about 15 groups, so expertise is...
06-Nov-2007 The New Chairman's Vision for 2008
TDWG has had a very busy year and has achieved a great deal. We owe a particular debt to Lee Belbin, Roger Hyam and Ricardo Pereira for the long hours they have put in to making the TDWG Infrastructure Project a success,...
17-Oct-2007 TDWG 2007 Conference
TDWG held its annual conference in Bratislava September 16-22. Thanks go to Eduard Stloukal and his team for hosting an excellent meeting. We used a new structure this year with a introductory day, linked themes and more reliance...
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