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Property:objectType
| Label | Object Type |
| Definition | High-level terms for the classification of curated objects. |
| Usage | A more generic classification of items in the collection than described in preparationType. |
| Existing property | |
| Existing class | |
| Existing property identifier | |
| Format | Text |
| Required | No |
| Repeatable | Yes |
| Constraints | objectType should be set in conjunction with preparationType, as each objectType has specific preparationTypes. E.g., if preparationType is one of 'cell culture', 'axenic culture', 'viable cells': objectType must = 'culture' |
| Examples | tissue, specimen, culture, rna, mineral, dna, environmental sample, HTS Library |
| Notes | This should not be used for classifying objects by taxon. The best way to do that is to use the Taxon class (formal taxonomy and vernacular names) or ObjectClassification class (informal classification). For cultural collections terms such as 'bowl', 'textile' are appropriate at this level. For large collections of multiple types use pipe delimited lists. |
objectType used to be issue https://github.com/tdwg/cd/issues/64 - see thread under there for relevant discussion.
In the usage field I think you mean preparationType rather than preservationType. Constraints field doesn't seem correct either as it mixes the two terms.
There is a lot of overlap with the proposed materialSampleType https://github.com/tdwg/dwc/issues/345.
The proposed definition and vocabulary correspond nicely to the SpecimenType we're working on in iSamples. See the Decision tree for the vocabulary on GitHub. We're taking a broader cross domain view of the kinds of physical samples that are in scope, and not including information objects (which are linked to samples as related resources).
Is there a preparationType vocabulary somewhere? 'preparation' doesn't seem to be defined in DWC-- closest I can find is
preparations: A list (concatenated and separated) of preparations and preservation methods for a specimen.
This is circular and doesn't actually define 'preparation'....
@smrgeoinfo
You can see some ideas for some "possible vocabulary" in the Darwin Core Hour Presentation about the need for a preparations extension to DwC.
GGBN developed a preparation extension for DwC (and ABCD) years ago: https://terms.tdwg.org/wiki/GGBN_Preparation_Vocabulary
The usage and examples ob objectType are based on ggbn:materialSampleType (https://terms.tdwg.org/wiki/ggbn:materialSampleType). This term has been only created for using GGBN with DwC (ABCD already has a similar term) and will presumably changed to objectType in the next version of GGBN as the term name is much more generic.
Where is the definitions of a "preparation" that allows me to unambiguously distinguish a 'preparation' from any random 'object'? Can a preparation be something other than a 'materialSample'. Can a 'materialSample' ever be something other than a physical object (composed of matter, with defined boundaries)?
workflow: Physical thing in the world (living, dead, inorganic, whatever!...) --> collection event (continuant, ?tdwg occurrence???) --> preparation process (continuant, not endurant, could be no action, e.g. for a rock sample) --> preserved physical object --> assign identifier (now its a materialSample--the thing that's actually 'curated', i.e. saved somewhere) --> other preparation processes --> analyzed material sample (should have a new identifier) --> analysis process --> data. Analyzed material sample might be changed to a new material sample (or annihilated) by the analysis process. If there is something 'saved', it should have a new identifier.
How is preparation different from materialSample?
I'm looking at what's here from an outside user with a data modeling/ontology perspective, and experience managing geologic physical samples.
Seems that there are four fundamental facets of interest: what is the object, what is it composed of (material type), what is it a sample of (sampled feature), how was its collected/preserved?
have a look at http://www.cidoc-crm.org/Entity/E19-Physical-Object/version-7.1.1 for a good definition of physical object. A definition of objectType should be linked to a well defined concept of object (the domain of objectType).