Last year’s Darwin Core Workshop focused on understanding and documenting the semantics of key Darwin Core terms. This year, we continue this work by looking at two areas - basisOfRecord and nomenclature - that remain sources of confusion to users. We also look forward by considering how biodiversity informatics might evolve to both accommodate and enable our ever-increasing understanding of microbial life, and its significance.

James Macklin will present an introduction to the workshop.  This will be followed by a Darwin Core tutorial by John Wieczorek (Mr. Darwin Core himself--he even looks like Darwin!), followed by brief presentations by the leaders of each of the other three sessions, providing previews of the conversations to come: Markus Döring, on the diversity of occurrences in Darwin Core; Rich Pyle, on nomenclatural issues in Darwin Core; and Bob Robbins, on the need for something radically different.

If you are new to the Darwin Core standard, want to understand the nature of its recent changes, or want to better understand issues that users are currently facing, you should not miss this session.