This is the repository for the MIDS Task Group, dealing with Minimum Information about a Digital Specimen.
Draft Documentation: https://tdwg.github.io/mids This README last updated: 1 Jan 2025.
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 |
| Ben Norton | michaelnorton.ben@gmail.com | |
| 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 |
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.
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.
Milestones are being used to structure work and progress.
A MIDS website has been created for the draft version of MIDS to help visualise and understand the structure and to provide information about resources including tools used to calculate MIDS scores.
MIDS is being developed within the following structure:
MIDS Levels - Four levels have been defined and can be found on the Information Elements webpage
MIDS Information Elements - The information elements have been defined and can be found on the Information Elements webpage
MIDS SSSOM Mapping - The elements of each MIDS level have been mapped to terms as used in common domain data standards, such as Darwin Core or ABCD and can be found on the Mappings webpage
MIDS Tools - Several tools have been developed and can be tested by users. They can be found on the MIDS Tools webpage
The MIDS website is now the most up to date version of the Minimum Information about a Digitised Specimen (MIDS).
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.