This is the repository for the MIDS Task Group, dealing with Minimum Information about a Digital Specimen.

This README last updated: 24 May 2021.

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. The TG meets monthly by Zoom.

The new MIDS standard 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 digitization processes and workflows and the subsequent management (including making public) of the outputs of digitization, including reporting requirements for management and funding agencies.

Become involved and contribute by:

• Contacting the Conveners and/or signing up to the task group mailing list.

• Participating in the monthly meetings (first Thursday of the month, UTC 13:30 - 15:00).

• Watching this github repository. Submitting or commenting on an issue.

• Using and evaluating the the specification as it emerges and providing feedback e.g., by submitting an issue or suggesting a new need.

The master branch contains this README.md file and the released public version of the MIDS specification. As of 03 November 2020, work is still in progress and there is not yet a released Version 1.0 of the specification.

The working-draft branch contains the current working draft in the current-draft folder. Older drafts are moved to the old-drafts folder as they are superseded.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.

A MIDS Element definition can have one of five statuses, as listed in the following table

The normal flow of state transitions for MIDS Element issues is the following:

Not yet discussed --> under discussion --> agreed --> accepted into specification

From either of the agreed or accepted into specification states, the status of the MIDS Element definition can change to the has issues state and from there it can re-enter the under discussion state when the matter is picked up again for discussion within the TG.

The CETAF Digitisation Working Group (DWG) collaborates on digitization 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-v0.15-29Jul2021.md

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.

MISC 2012. iDigBio MISC Data Element Catalog (Phase 1, V0, rev. 15 December 2012). https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/images/c/c9/Phase_I_Report.pdf.

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