70 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
70 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
%META:TOPICINFO{author="StephenLong" date="1161629749" format="1.1" version="1.7"}%
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%META:TOPICPARENT{name="DarwinCoreDraftStandard"}%
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---++Element Description: Country
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The full, unabbreviated name of the country or major political unit in which the organism was collected or observed.
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---++++ Open Questions:
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See Open Discussion at: [[http://circa.gbif.net/Public/irc/tdwg/dwcrev/newsgroups?n=dwcrev][GBIF Circa Registries, etc.]]
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• 16 Oct 2004 - Recommendation that the Country element be populated with ISO 2-letter country code. (Ginzbarg, Kirk GBIF Circa).
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---+++ Comments
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Use the space below to make comments about this page. -- Main.StephenLong - 24 Aug 2006
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%ICON{bubble}% *[HERBARIA] Databasing "County"*
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Posted by: Steven Ginzbarg [mailto:sginzbar@biology.as.ua.edu] Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2004, 20:26:26
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If Country will be used for selecting records we should try to standardize the names. The current version of !DarwinCore2 which GBIF is now using has this description for Country: "The country or major political unit from which the specimen was collected. http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/codlstp1/db_en.html
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ISO 3166-1 values should be used. Full country names are currently in use. A future recommendation is to use ISO3166-1 two letter codes or the full name when searching."
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However the !DarwinCore2 being proposed by Stan Blum as a TDWG draft standard does not mention using codes in the country description:
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"The full, unabbreviated name of the country or major political unit from which the organism was collected."
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I think some will interpret this as "United States" and others as "United States of America" unless a standard (ISO) is specified. ISO provides short country names and full country names, 2 letter codes and 3 letter codes, e.g. Alpha-2: ZA Alpha-3: ZAF English short name: SOUTH AFRICA English full name: Republic of South Africa French short name: AFRIQUE DU SUD French full name: République sud-africaine The short country names from ISO 3166-1 and the alpha-2 codes are made available by ISO for download at no charge at http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/index.html.
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However if full ISO country names will be required for !DwC, we will need to pay for them. The ISO3166-1 cost 100 euros or about $125 from the Deutsches Institut für Normlung (DIN) http://www2.din.de or http://www2.din.de/index.php?lang=en (English). Search for ISO3166. The full ISO3166-1 data can be ordered from ISO as an Access 2000 database for 150 CHF (Swiss Francs) or about $122.
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ISO country names are available in English or French but not in the language of the country. If ISO full country names are the standard, the language would need to be specified. Country codes should be more stable than names, and short names more stable than full names when regimes change.
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Steven Hill wrote: "I no longer use abbreviations. Those were important when limited space was available on hard drives, but I do not believe it to be useful now, and it is simply too much to try and remember so many acronyms and codes when one can search for a full name these days."
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We have a table that converts the countries in our geographic authority file to the 2-letter ISO codes if possible. Users of our database are unaware that countries are being sent to GBIF as codes. Ideally, people querying the GBIF data portal should see the country names even though the code was what was provided. From the GBIF home page http://www.gbif.org/.
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I can go to Browse, click on Country and pick a country from the list. (What standard is GBIF using for these country names?) In the advanced search the country has to be typed in to a text box.
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>From: "lapham" To: Date sent: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 23:33:07 -0500 Subject: [HERBARIA] Databasing "County"
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> We need metadata standards so we all know what the data means. The
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> metadata data I've seen for country, is pretty vague but NBII said the
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> intent was the ISO standard. If the users decide the meta data
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> standards individually as seems to be the case at present, you can get
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> quite a lot of variation and your queries don't prodeuce the results
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> you are expecting.
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> I have seen all of the following used for our country:
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> USA
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> USA.
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> U.S.A.
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> United States
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> United States of America.
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> US
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> US.
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> U.S.
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> They all work for human biengs, but all are different to a computer.
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> If you are expecting one of these, because that is what you use, there
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> is no guarantee that someone else who is sharing data is using the
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> same nomenclature. We shouldn't have to fiddle with stuff like this.
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> Inicdedtally the fourth third one is the ISO nomenclature.
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> Charlie Lapham
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<DL><DD>%ICON{bubble}% *Re: [HERBARIA] Databasing County*
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Posted by: Paul Kirk [mailto:p.kirk@cabi.org] Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2004, 21:34:57
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The TDWG 'Geographical Recording System' provides a means of recording distribution (on land masses) via a 4 level hierarchy. One or more elements at the lowest level can be combined to give ISO equivalents (e.g. Sabah, Sarawak & Peninsular Malaysia give ISO Malaysia). This sytem is not a substitute for the original locality data but a means of standardizing to compare like with like in the absence of resources to do full georeferencing.
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Paul M. Kirk;
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(CABI Bioscience)
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</DL>
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