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This lesson is in the alpha phase, which means that it has been taught once and lesson authors are iterating on feedback.
Marine Biological Data Mobilization Workshop 2024
Darwin Core isn’t difficult to apply, it just takes a little bit of
time.
Using Darwin Core allows datasets from across projects,
organizations, and countries to be integrated together.
Applying certain general principles to the data will make it easier
to map to Darwin Core.
Implementing Darwin Core makes data FAIR-er and means becoming part
of a community of people working together to understand species no
matter where they work or are based.
When doing conversions it’s best to break out your data into it’s
component pieces.
Dates are messy to deal with. Some packages have easy solutions,
otherwise use regular expressions to align date strings to ISO
8601.
WoRMS LSIDs are a requirement for OBIS.
Latitude and longitudes are like dates, they can be messy to deal
with. Take a similar approach.
Darwin Core uses cores and extensions to model the multitude of
biological observation data that exists.
OBIS uses the Event (or Occurrence) Core with the Extended
Measurement or Fact extension to make sure no information is lost.
Additional fields are required and put into different files when
using a Core with the Extended Measurement or Fact extension.
ID fields are important keys in your data and we recommend building
them from the information in your data.
Several packages (e.g. obistools, Hmisc, pandas) can be used to
QA/QC data.
The IPT is a well-documented and flexible system for publishing data
to OBIS
Some Darwin Core and Ecological Metadata Language fields are
required for publishing to OBIS.
Strive to write more than the minimal metadata
The Standardizing Marine Bio Data (SBMD) group is available to
help.
The SMBD meets monthly and you are welcome to join.
The SMBD github issue tracker is the best place to reach out for
help.
