Taxonomic Coverage page mockup

[Matt Jones]

Hi Perumal,

That is a nice mockup.  A couple of issues come to mind.

1) Not all taxa use the ranks listed in your table.  For example, in 
plants they use 'Division' in place of 'Phylum'.  There are many of 
these variants, which is why in eml the system allows the user to 
specifiy both the rank and the name (rather than fixing the rank to a 
predefined set). So I would prefer a two column table containing "Rank" 
and "Name" for the most precise rank provided by the user, which might 
have values like "Species" and "Bosmina longistrosis".  You could also 
list common names in this table if desired as a third column.

2) When people use coded values in their metadata (ie enumerations) 
they'll be defining the codes in terms of taxon names, and that same 
process can be used to fill out the taxon coverage info.  So that is 
another way through which they might provide the taxon information.

Matt


Perumal Sambasivam wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> For the taxonomic coverage page, I have a preliminary mockup (pls see the 
> attachment).
> 
> It consists of - 
> 
> 1. A list for entering taxon names. The list consists of 7 columns for
> each level of classification. A user could add a species name and specify
> all the names in the hierarchy. There is also a column for the common
> names.  It will be a dropdown box of all the common names of the whole
> hierarchy. If user wants to add a common name, a dialog box is presented
> with a customlist for each level and the user can add a common name to any
> level.
> 
> 2. The user can import the taxon data from a particular table. The column 
> values will be read, an ITIS lookup will be done for each value to 
> determine its level and values in the hierarchy above it and the values 
> will be added to the above list. The user can edit any value, if needed.
> 
> 3. The user can also optionally specify a new Classification system and 
> identifier.
> 
> 
> Please let me know your comments/feedback on this.
> 
> Thanks!
> -Perumal
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Perumal Sambasivam
> 
> National Center for Ecological 
> Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
> University of California Santa Barbara
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 

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Matt Jones                                     jones at nceas.ucsb.edu
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/    Fax: 425-920-2439    Ph: 907-789-0496
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
University of California Santa Barbara
Interested in ecological informatics? http://www.ecoinformatics.org
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