Basic Standards Recommendations
The most widely deployed formats for biodiversity occurrence data are Darwin Core (wiki) and ABCD (wiki).
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.
2013 TDWG Annual Conference Announcement
Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) will hold its annual conference in Florence, Italy on October 28 – November 1. it will be held at the Grand Hotel Mediterraneo (http://www.
Please become a member. TDWG needs everyone with a strong interest in biodiversity information to participate in developing effective standards for sharing that information. We need IT professionals, taxonomists, ecologists, geoscientists, and librarians. We need members from institutions and agencies that do or could use our standards to make their data more usable. Your participation ensures 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 by March 31 (discount period extended!)
Institutional members are entitled to up to five discounted registrations at the annual conference. Please visit the Membership page for more details.
Latest News
01-Feb-2010 TAPIR Approved as a TDWG Standard
The TDWG Executive Committee has approved the adoption of TDWG Access Protocol for Information Retrieval (TAPIR) - www.tdwg.org/standards/449/ as a TDWG standard.
The committee acknowledges the excellent work of the TAPIR...
29-Jan-2010 Review of TDWG Systems and Services
As you are probably aware, we have had a few problems with the TDWG systems over the last few years. Thankfully, most of the issues have been minor, but we have had a few more serious problems with Twiki.
While a number of...
31-Oct-2009 TDWG Interest Group on Phylogenetics Standards Now Official
The Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) organization officially approved the Phylogenetics Standards Interest Group in September 2009. Interest Groups form the primary social and scientific units that drive and sustain...
26-Oct-2009 GUID and LSID Applicability Statements - Public Review
TDWG is pleased to announce the commencement of the Public Review of the Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) and Life Sciences Identifier (LSID) Applicability Statements. Applicability Statements provide guidance for use of...
09-Oct-2009 Darwin Core Ratified as a TDWG Standard
The TDWG Executive Committee announces the official ratification of Darwin Core (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/index.htm) as a TDWG standard. Darwin Core joins four...
RSS Feed
See the News Archive for more news.
