Presentation: The Specifications of Earth Science Collections (CETAF)

The specifications of Earth Science Collections (CETAF)

This presentation is particularly relevant to discussions under the following topics:

Presentation on characteristics of Earth Science Collections from Laura Tilley, Johanna Eder, Bjӧrn Berning, Charalampos Fassoulas, Steffen Kiel, Andreas Kroh, Jiri Kvacek, Giles Miller, Michael Rasser and Rachel Walcott for the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF), April 2020 - available as Powerpoint or as PDF.

It is important for this consultation to explore the ways in which the model for a collections catalogue can support earth science collections alongside biological collections.

Can I please ask for more information about the vocabularies referenced in this presentation (Object type, storage type in particular)?

  • Are they a work in progress or would you consider them relatively complete and something to be promoted, translated etc already?
  • Are they openly available?
  • Is there a machine readable format?

Many thanks

Hi Tim,
to my knowledge there is nothing in place right now. This issue is also on the agenede of the TDWG Earthscience specimen and Paleopbiology Interest Group. I am leading a task in DiSSCo Prepare on the User stories / use cases for earthsciences and could contribute from this site as well. In this task we will consolidate everything on requirement analysis / user stories already conducted and add missing stakeholder surveys. I sure one of the outcomes / requirements will be controlled machine readable vocabularies! We really should join forces!
Hope this helps!

1 Like

Hi Tim,

The categories/classifications in the presentation are those developed under the SYNTHESYS+ collection digitisation dashboard task. Storage type is: Storage type of a specimen (i.e. what form is the specimen - (e.g. thin section)– related to collection management, for example to help with decisions on planning for space and building developments etc. We have aligned them with the TDWG CD model. They are complete and this is what the SYNTHESYS+ Dashboard and ELViS will use. They are open, since they are being aligned with the TDWG CD model – and will be incorporated into the CETAF Registry.

The CDD classifications are high-level, but more granular information to specimen level could be hinged of them.

To your question - are they in machine readable format? They eventually will be in machine readable format. The data for the dashboard will be collected via the CETAF Collection Registry which plans to have a machine readable and human readable identifiers.

Most recently a new member of the CETAF Earth Science Group (who is a curator in minerology) said that actually mineralogy should be separated from geology - because its so vast that minerology needs its own subset of catagorisation - it relies on chemistry, as well as physical properties for classification. They suggested to have a look at the community called Mindat which specializes in the classification of minerals https://www.mindat.org/.
Since the catogories/classifications schemes for the CDD have now been finalized we cannot incorporate mineralogy as a separate discipline - but it is something to think about for the future.

1 Like

Thanks, @L_Tilley is there an online link to those that we can reference, please?

Hi Tim,

Here is a link to the SYNTHESYS+ dashboard classifications: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10xaOHJo8fMJh49PskSNPSJEGeUJu-okyyrHjwoRzBbI/edit?usp=sharing

Cheers
Laura

1 Like