• The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is
an organization that works almost exclusively on
developing and maintaining an international standard for describing online data and information.
• Darwin Core, based upon the ideas and principles
of the Dublin Core, is a biodiversity informatics
data standard that contains an extensive vocabulary of terms to facilitate the discovery, retrieval,
and integration of information about an organism.
• The Distributed Generic Information Retrieval
(DiGIR) protocol is an implementation of the Darwin Core that allows contributing researchers and
biologists to link their data to web portals, while
staying in full control of their data in general along
with the extent of data sharing and the level of data
delivery. DiGIR also enables users to connect and
query computers via a web portal. MaNIS, ORNIS,
FishNet, HerpNet, and a host of other web portals
all use DiGIR.
• The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) has developed what it calls the NBII
biological metadata standard, which outlines how
to describe biological data and information. That
information is then added to the NBII Metadata
Clearinghouse, which serves as an online and
searchable card catalog with descriptions of numerous different biological datasets from multiple
agencies and organizations (See Tools and Technology, page 62).
• The Federal Geographic Data Committee develops
procedures and assists in the implementation of
a distributed discovery mechanism for national
digital geospatial data for use in such applications
as geographic information systems or GIS.
• The Data Documentation Initiative is an effort to
develop a standard to describe social science data.
Pride of Ownership
Although in an ideal world all scientific data would be
openly available to all researchers, this isn’t always the
case. Users attempt to make their data easily available,
while protecting sensitive information (such as the
location of the last population of an endangered species). Today there are several web tools that allow for
both sharing and control. For example, Creative Commons, an organization launched in 2001, provides free
licenses and other legal tools that define how information can be used by others. It allows data owners to
determine how others can share, remix, or reuse their
data. Similarly GBIF, a global information infrastructure that facilitates free and open access to the world’s
biodiversity data, guarantees that its data publishers
will retain control of their own data. In general, most
databases today are designed in such a way that data
holders and publishers retain ownership and management of their data, while allowing access to the data
that they choose to make publicly available.
Clearly the revolution in data sharing and management is here and will continue to evolve. Whether
using web portals, GIS systems, search engines,
clearinghouses, or other tools to record, manage,
share, and find data, today’s wildlife professionals
have multiple data-sharing resources at their fingertips, which ultimately will help advance the cause of
wildlife conservation.
Additional reporting by Divya Abhat, science writer
for The Wildlife Professional.
See this article online at www.wildlife.org
for additional literature on biodiversity data
sharing and management.
