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# Darwin Core

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Darwin Core is a standard maintained by the [Darwin Core Maintenance Interest Group](https://www.tdwg.org/standards/dwc/#maintenance-group">). It includes a glossary of terms (in other contexts these might be called properties, elements, fields, columns, attributes, or concepts) intended to **facilitate the sharing of information about biological diversity** 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.

## Getting started

- [Quick Reference Guide](terms/)
- Usage guides: how to use Darwin Core as [Simple Darwin Core](simple/), [Text (Darwin Core Archives)](text/), [XML](xml/) or [RDF](rdf/)
- [GitHub repository](https://github.com/tdwg/dwc): where Darwin Core is maintained
- [Normative term list](list/): the document containing the full history of normative Darwin Core term definitions
- [Distribution files](https://github.com/tdwg/dwc/tree/master/dist): convenient files to start using Darwin Core