Presentation: The Specifications of Earth Science Collections (CETAF)

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.

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