This is the repository for the MIDS Task Group, dealing with Minimum Information about a Digital Specimen.
This README last updated: 15 May 2024.
The MIDS Task Group is a task group to develop a standard for Minimum Information about a Digital Specimen (MIDS). The TG is chartered by its parent Collection Descriptions Interest Group. For full details of the TG and its scope, read the charter.
The day-to-day operations of the Task Group is documented in this repository. You can also track and participate in the work of the group by watching this repository and monitoring the group's issues tracker. To be sure of hearing about meetings and updates join the group's mailing list
The MIDS specification will be complementary to the Collection Descriptions standard that is also under the responsibility of the Collection Descriptions Interest Group.
This Task Group welcomes anyone who has a practical interest in minimum information standards, Digital Specimen information, experience with digitisation processes and workflows and the subsequent management (including making public) of the outputs of digitisation, including reporting requirements for management and funding agencies.
Become involved and contribute by:
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Contacting the Conveners and/or signing up to the task group mailing list.
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Participating in the meetings. The timing of these are currently weekly on Thursdays at 14:00 UTC. Contact the Conveners for more information.
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Watching this github repository. Submitting or commenting on an issue.
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Using and evaluating the the specification as it emerges and providing feedback e.g., by submitting an issue or suggesting a new need.
| Name | Affiliation | github name / Email |
|---|---|---|
| Elspeth Haston | Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh | @emhaston / ehaston AT rbge.org.uk |
| Cat Chapman | Florida Museum of Natural History | / cchapman AT floridamuseum |
Alex Hardisty, formerly Director of Informatics Projects, Cardiff University
| Name | Affiliation | github name / Email |
|---|---|---|
| Wouter Addink | Naturalis Biodiversity Center | @wouteraddink |
| Christian Bölling | Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN) | @cboelling |
| Mathias Dillen | Meise Botanic Garden | @matdillen |
| Gabriele Dröge | Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin | @gdadade |
| Dag Endresen | University of Oslo, Natural History Museum | @dagendresen |
| Falko Glöckler | Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN) | falko.gloeckler AT mfn.berlin |
| Quentin Groom | Meise Botanic Garden | @qgroom |
| Anton Güntsch | Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin | a.guentsch AT bgbm.org |
| Josh Humphries | Natural History Museum, London | @jrdh |
| Pieter Huybrechts | Meise Botanic Garden | @PietrH |
| Chris Hunter | GigaDB, BGI Group | @only1chunts |
| Gunnhild Marthinsen | University of Oslo Natural History Museum | g.m.marthinsen AT nhm.uio.no |
| Deborah Paul | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign / Species File Group | @debpaul |
| Richard Pyle | Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum | deepreef AT bishopmuseum.org |
| Mareike Petersen | Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN) | mareike.petersen AT mfn.berlin |
| Richard Rabeler | University of Michigan Herbarium | rabeler AT umich.edu |
| Eirik Rindal | University of Oslo Natural History Museum | eirik.rindal AT nhm.uio.no |
| Hannu Saarenmaa | Bioshare Digitization | hannu AT bioshare.com |
| Lutz Suhrbier | Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin | l.suhrbier AT bgbm.org |
| Maarten Trekels | Meise Botanic Garden | @mtrekels |
| Dagmar Triebel | The Bavarian Natural History Collections (SNSB) | triebel AT snsb.de |
| Rachel Walcott | National Museums Scotland | r.walcott AT nms.ac.uk |
| Claus Weiland | Senckenberg Society for Nature Research | @cp-weiland |
| Karin Wiltschke | Natural History Museum Vienna | @Karin-Wiltschke |
| Ben Norton | michaelnorton.ben@gmail.com |
The main branch contains the current documentation, including the most recently released draft version of the standard, the information elements and the mapping.
The working-draft branch contains the different versions of the standard during its development including the current draft which is being actively updated. Older drafts are moved to the old-drafts folder as they are superseded. The use-cases folder contains the use cases on which the current working draft is based.
The github repository TDWG TG MIDS together with the TG mailing list and regular TG meetings is the way of working.
Github issues and their status labels provide the main way of keeping track of issues, discussions and progress.
Github issues are used in two ways to make progress. Labels indicate the kind of issue and other information. See issue label meanings below.
Issues labelled with the black 'MIDS Element' label are used to hold the working definition of a specific MIDS information element. Other labels (MIDS-0, MIDS-1, MIDS-2, MIDS-3) indicate which MIDS levels the information belongs to. These MIDS Elements are also labelled with a 'status: ...' label to indicate current discussion/agreement status. The values for this label are listed below, together with an explanation of the allowed state transitions.
All other issues than MIDS Element issues are used to raise issues (concerns) relating to the specification, such as bugs, suggestions for improvement, request for clarification, etc. These are labelled appropriately according to the second half of the list below.
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| MIDS Element | Defines and tracks progress towards agreement on a MIDS information element that appears at one or more MIDS levels. |
| MIDS-0 | Info element appears at MIDS level 0. |
| MIDS-1 | Info element appears at MIDS level 1. |
| MIDS-2 | Info element appears at MIDS level 2. |
| MIDS-3 | Info element appears at MIDS level 3. |
| status: ... | Status value of MIDS Element definition. See next subsection for possible status values. |
A MIDS Element definition can have one of five statuses, as listed in the following table
| Status label value | Meaning |
|---|---|
| status: not yet discussed | The element has not been discussed yet. |
| status: under discussion | The element is being discussed in the task group. |
| status: agreed | The definition of the element at the level it appears at has been agreed by the task group. |
| status: accepted in specification | The agreed element definition has been written into the draft specification. |
| status: has issues | The element definition has issues associated with it. |
| status: deprecated | The element definition should no longer be used and will eventually be removed from MIDS. |
| status: removed | The element definition has been removed from MIDS. |
The CETAF Digitisation Working Group (DWG) collaborates on digitisation issues and collectively works together to share practical experiences to increase capacity and capability to digitize natural science collections. In this sense, DWG works with the MIDS materials produced by the present task group to discuss, implement, evaluate and provide input/feedback on the development of MIDS specifications to the present task group.
MIDS-definition-v0.17-13Jul2023 Cite as: tbc
MIDS-definition-v0.16-28May2022 Cite as: Haston, E., Hardisty, A., Addink, W., Dillen, M., Groom, Q., Chapman, C. et al. (Draft) Minimum Information about a Digital Specimen (MIDS) v0.16, 28 May 2022.
MIDS-definition-v0.14-29Mar2021 Cite as: Hardisty, A., Addink, W., Dillen, M., Groom, Q., Haston, E., et al. (Draft) Minimum Information about a Digital Specimen (MIDS) v0.14, 29 Mar 2021.
Borsch, T., Stevens, A.-D., Häffner, E., Güntsch, A., Berendsohn, W.G., et al. (2020): A complete digitization of German herbaria is possible, sensible and should be started now. Research Ideas and Outcomes 6: e50675. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.6.e50675.
iDigBio MISC Data Element Catalog (Phase 1, V0, rev. 15 December 2012). https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/images/c/c9/Phase_I_Report.pdf.