Public review of the Minimum Information about a Digital Specimen (MIDS) standard

Public review from October 5th, 2026 until December 4th, 2026.

Standards Minimum Information about a Digital Specimen MIDS
Image by (MHNT) Costidiscus recticostatus and Heteroceras emericianus - Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France" by Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The MIDS Task Group is pleased to announce that the public review of the Minimum Information about a Digital Specimen (MIDS) standard is now open. The review begins on 5 October 2026 and will remain open until 4 December 2026.

MIDS is a new standard, and this is its first public review.

MIDS gives collections a shared, measurable definition of what it means for a specimen to be “digitized”. It helps institutions prioritize digitization work, track progress consistently, and publish specimen data that are fit for research and reuse. MIDS complements existing standards such as Darwin Core and ABCD rather than replacing them.

What the review covers

  • Four cumulative levels of digitization — MIDS 0 (Bare), MIDS 1 (Basic), MIDS 2 (Intermediate) and MIDS 3 (Extended)

  • Information elements — the specific pieces of specimen information required at each level

  • Discipline schemas — which elements are required at which level for biology, paleontology and geology

  • Mappings — how MIDS information elements map to terms in Darwin Core, ABCD and other standards

How to participate

The public review is open to everyone, and we encourage all community members to participate.

  • Preferred method — comment on the issue tracker at https://github.com/tdwg/mids/issues. You may comment on an existing issue or open a new one.

  • Alternative — reviewers who are unable or prefer not to use the issue tracker can use the MIDS Community Feedback Workbook. It lists every discipline, level, and information element in one place, with columns for your comments beside each entry, and requires no GitHub account. Return the completed workbook to the Review Manager.

All feedback is welcome, including agreement — telling us that an entry is correct as written is as useful as proposing a change. All comments will be public and archived following the public review.

Key resources

Questions

For any questions or concerns about the review, please contact the Review Manager, Sharon Grant, at sgrant@fieldmuseum.org. Questions about the standard itself can also be directed to the MIDS Task Group.

Please share this announcement with colleagues and networks working in specimen digitization.