The Group is developing a lightweight data standard for describing entire collections of natural history materials. Collection description records are intended to be verbose and so are different from the rows of data that are more usual in item-level databases. They also record information about access to, and usage of, the collection and where to get more detailed information.

There are many fine collections that have no database or other Web presence and so are in danger of being overlooked by researchers as we become more reliant on the Web to reveal what exists. A brief descriptive record can act as the “business card” of a collection, providing enough information to identify and locate it. Collections descriptions have several other uses, as described in the section on history and context below.

A subset of the standard will be used in a similar way as the “business card” of organisations in the area of biodiversity research. Such organisations are often known by a code and multi-disciplinary organisations may have a different code in each discipline. NCD records will allow an organisation to be identified from a code and provide information on its other codes, if applicable.