Hello.
I’m trying to publish an occurrence dataset.
Those occurrence records were used to publish a book with all the name of voucher specimens listed in appendix.
However, the specimen names and other information(such as common name, collector names) were written in Korean letters, not in English.
I wonder if I should change the names from Korean to alphabet characters according to rule of romanization of Korea(for example, 설악산 to Mt. Seorak), but I’m worried about romanization might confuse information documented in the book my organization published.
I’m wondering if I have to change all the specimen names into alphabet so that everyone can see and understand our specimens. Or may I make an occurrenceID with triplet form(institution code:collection code:romanized specimen name) and record original specimen name(which are not in alphabet) at recordNumber?
Thank you for reading my question. Have a great day.
Hi @jaesc thank you for your questions.
It is ok to use Korean or other non-latin characters for most fields. However, there are a few exceptions where our system is not equipped to interpret those fields in other alphabets. The fields where the values should be in latin characters are:
the scientificName field (for example Abbottina rivularis (Basilewsky, 1855))
I think the identifiers fields such as occurrenceID and the catalogueNumber field should be ok but I would advise to use latin characters if possible (just to be safe).
If the original catalogue number/specimen label are written in non-latin characters, one solution would be to put the original catalogue number in the otherCatalogNumbers field and the latin version in the catalogueNumber field.
Note that you can always use the remark fields like occurrenceRemarks to share additional information when needed.
The locality and province names as well as the vernacular names for species and recorder names should be fine in non-latin characters.
Hello, @mgrosjean. Thank you very much for your clear and kind reply.
It is great for me to use otherCatalogueNumbers field for the original catalogue number.
Have a great day.