Talk:Splitting of collection specimens (Guide best practices)

Talk and questions from e-mail. Discussion can also evolve here

[Alex Hardisty] Anton, You mentioned 3 questions (among many I’m sure) about specific issues in curating identifiers. I translated them for the NSId case and begun the answers …

[Anton Güntsch] For all of the cases (and more to come) we will provide RDF-encoded examples so that people know how to represent the information.

Q1. What happens to the NSId when a physical specimen is split into parts?

[Alex Hardisty] The original DS and NSId is retained and updated to point to each of the new parts, with a relation (see below). Each new part gets its own DS/NSId. Each new DS is linked back to its parent.

[Anton Güntsch] This is what we recommend as well. In addition, I think that the original specimen record needs to know its successors (and provide links to them). This might sound redundant but one cannot rely on the presence of the reverse relationship and a performant inference.

Q2. What happens to the NSId after the physical specimen ceases to exist?

[Alex Hardisty] The general approach is that once created a Digital Specimen and its corresponding NSId exists permanently. When the corresponding physical specimen ceases to exist (e.g., because it was destroyed, lost, etc.) change in status should be recorded by the insertion of a new status information element into the Digital Specimen. Possible statuses are: extant, lost, destroyed, split. <any more?>

[Anton Güntsch] Exactly. Digital records of specimens have to be kept forever in the CMS and get a meaningful status (‘unclear‘ might be an additional one). We need to agree a controlled terminology for this and we need to find an element representing this status. I believe that neither DwC nor ABCD has this already. Will check.

Q3. How do I represent relationships between specimens (e.g., duplicates) in a standardized way?

[Alex Hardisty] What is the list of standard relations that must be supported? isDuplicateOf, isParatypeOf, hasHolotype, …

[Anton Güntsch] Again, the terminology needs to be agreed/developed.