Taxon WGKU Staff Meeting_21_May_2003

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KU Union, 2-4 PM

; Present : S. Gauch, J. Beach, D. Vieglais, A. Stewart

Agenda

Review the Taxon WG mandate for KU staff from the SEEK All Hands meeting in San Diego the previous week.

Meeting Summary

Definitions

; Name Providers (NPs) : online sources of names of organisms, usually taxonomic and latin, but could alsi be a common name server, definition could extended to sources of names for other kinds of things besides organisms. Name Providers may or not be 'authoritative' but usually are in the minds of the owners. No implied relationship between the names provided and any underlying concepts. Examples: ITIS U.S. and ITIS Canada. ; Occurence Data Providers (ODPs) : online datasets or databases that contain names of organisms, usually formal, Latin, but also to include common names used in data sets. Examples: Ecological data sets, museum catalog databases, abstract databases such as BIOSIS's Zoological Record. (We were referring to this as a "site database" previously.) ; Taxonomic Concept Service (TCS) : an online service that identifies and mediates differences in taxonomic concepts, with various public methods, standard API, SOAP-based protocols. Primary methods are to: ; Taxonomic Concept Datastore : The internal datastore used by the Taxonomic Concept Service. This datastore may not be directly visible (except through the Taxonomic Concept Service).

1. CompareTaxonomicConceptObjects: Given two taxonomic concepts, determine if they are the same
2. ResolveTaxonomicConceptObjects: Given a taxonomic concept, find all the taxonomic concepts that match or overlap in Occurence Data sets
3. UpdateTaxonomicConceptObjects: (Dave could you define this)

KU Development Objectives (for the next 30 days)

Derived from the May 13 San Diego Meeting Minutes:

1. Create a demonstration web-based software tool to populate small database of concepts. Pick a simple schema while we are waiting for Edinburgh's draft concept metamodel schema. This is a demo database for the Taxonomic Concept Service.
2. Create demo web-based query tool to take as input a name, and return concept records in a database that match. Use the same query schema as for #1.
3. Create/Test Initial Matching Algorithm (AS consulting with SG, JK)
4. Create web-based demo tool to populate a demo Occurence Data Sets (#7 from May 13th meeting list) This is a demo component of an Occurence Data Provider
5. Define Site Taxonomic Schema in EML and we will hack the mapping to the internal SEEK schema as a first cut, then we decide whether to modify EML or make a SEEKEML in the future to fix the mapping mismatches. What are the first resources to markup, (a) someone should contact BEAM about which data sets we should use for this emonstration, Bill M queried the modelers for this information (JB will contact Michener)
6. Create/Test Initial Matching Algorithm for assessing the similarity of names in occurence data with
7. Define API (DV)(Dave Vieglais has notes for services in a CVS document taxonservice.txt: http://cvs.ecoinformatics.org/cvs/cvsweb.cgi/~checkout~/seek/projects/taxon/docs/taxonservice.html )

U North Carolina activities

Post Docs could:

1. Look at EML and devise a plan for expanding it to include taxonomic concepts and names
2. Find existing online NPs and document the APIs for them (as a prelude to linking demo TCS tools to them.

KU Staffing Decisions

1. Allocate Aimee Stewart 50% time, developer
2. Allocate EECS undergraduate Robert Gales, full-time summer, developer, situated in the Biodiversity Research Center
3. Postpone search for other 50% TWG developer position, not needed at this time, review timing of hire in late summer
4. Susan Gauch and Dave Vieglais will provide consultation and oversight