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# Darwin Core

<p class="lead">Darwin Core is a standard maintained by the Darwin Core maintenance group. It includes a glossary of terms (in other contexts these might be called properties, elements, fields, columns, attributes, or concepts) intended to <strong>facilitate the sharing of information about biological diversity</strong> by providing identifiers, labels, and definitions. Darwin Core is primarily based on taxa, their occurrence in nature as documented by observations, specimens, samples, and related information.</p>

## Getting started

* [Darwin Core quick reference guide](terms/)
* Usage guides: on how to use Darwin Core as [Simple Darwin Core](simple/), [text](text/), [XML](xml/) or [RDF](rdf/)]
* [Darwin Core GitHub repository](https://github.com/tdwg/dwc): where Darwin Core is maintained
* [Normative document](https://github.com/tdwg/dwc/blob/master/vocabulary/term_versions.csv): a CSV file with the full version history of Darwin Core terms
* [Distribution files](https://github.com/tdwg/dwc/tree/master/dist): convenient files to start using Darwin Core