About

BACKGROUND

The Seahorse Project was created by Christina Hilburger, Melissa Nelson, and Donna Langille to fulfill the requirements for GLIS649 Digital Curation. This course was offered by the School of Information Studies at McGill University in 2018.

HOW TO USE THIS SITE

The Seahorse Project is powered by Omeka, which uses Dublin Core as its metadata standard. Dublin Core is a flexible and widely adapted metadata scheme, however it does not offer the granularity to describe biological specimen. Darwin Core, a Biodiversity Data Standard, has been mapped to Dublin Core to create appropriate descriptions for the seahorse collection.

METADATA CROSSWALK TABLE

Dublin Core Element	Dublin Core Definitions	Darwin Core Element	Darwin Core Definition	Scope Notes
Title	A name given to the resource.	organismName scientificName	A textual name or label assigned to an Organism instance. The full scientific name, with authorship and date information if known.	This element is used at the item level to name a specimen by its scientific name with its assigned identifier in parentheses. Should there be no given scientific name, a specimen can be named with a question mark. At the series level, this element is used to name a group of specimen by its given common name.
Subject	The topic of the resource.	None Corresponding	None Corresponding	Element not applicable.
Description	An account of the resource.	dynamicProperties	A list of additional measurements, facts, characteristics, or assertions about the record. Meant to provide a mechanism for structured content.	This element is used to describe the method and depth of capture for the specimen being described.
Creator	An entity primarily responsible for making the resource.	None Corresponding	None Corresponding	This element names the person(s), service, and/or institution that the specimen was derived from. Additional information about the entity can be given in parentheses.
Source	A related resource from which the described resource is derived.	None Corresponding	None Corresponding	Element not applicable.
Publisher	An entity responsible for making the resource available.	None Corresponding	None Corresponding	This element is used to identify the name of the person(s), organization, or service that made the specimen accessible.
Date	A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource.	eventDate	The date-time or interval during which an event occurred. Recommended best practice is to use an encoding scheme, such as ISO 8601:2004(E).	This element states the date or date range the specimen was collected and identified. Should there be no obvious date, an approximate date can be used with a question mark. The numeric expressions for month and year (MM-YYYY) or just year (YYYY) may be used.
Contributor	An entity responsible for making contributions to the content of the resource. Examples of a Contributor include a person, an organization or a service. Typically, the name of a Contributor should be used to indicate the entity.	IdentifiedBy Collector	The name(s) of the person(s) who applied the currently accepted Scientific Name to the Cataloged item. The name(s) of the collector(s) responsible for collecting the specimen or taking the observation.	This element designates the individual(s), corporation or institution responsible for collecting or identifying the specimen described.
Rights	Information about rights held in and over the resource.	dcterms: rightsHolder	A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.	This element specifies the rights owner(s) for the specimen being described.
Relation	A related resource.	None Corresponding	None Corresponding	Element not applicable.
Format	The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource.	None Corresponding	None Corresponding	Element not applicable.
Language	A language of the resource.	None Corresponding	None Corresponding	Element not applicable.
Type	The nature or genre of the resource.	basisOfRecord	The specific nature of the data record. Recommended best practice is to use controlled vocabulary such as Darwin Core classes “PreservedSpecimen,” “FossilSpecimen,” “LivingSpecimen.”	This element provides additional information to indicate the whether the specimen is living, preserved, or fossilized. Darwin Core classes are used as the controlled vocabulary.
Identifier	An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context.	organismID	An identifier for the organism instance (as opposed to a particular digital record of the organism). May be a globally unique identifier or an identifier specific to the data set.	This element is used at the item level to identify individual or groups of specimens by their given catalog number.
Coverage	The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant.	Location	A spatial region or named place.	This element specifies the body of water, administrative region and/or country that the specimen originate from. Should there be no given location, one may be given with a question mark. If the specific location is known, the hierarchy will be body of water, administrative region, then country. The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names is used as a guideline.

Note. All definitions were taken from the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (2012) and Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) (2015).