Darwin Core

Darwin Core is a standard maintained by the Darwin Core Maintenance Interest Group. It includes a glossary of terms (in other contexts these might be called properties, elements, fields, columns, attributes, or concepts) intended to facilitate the sharing of information about biological diversity by providing identifiers, labels, and definitions. Darwin Core is primarily based on taxa, their occurrence in nature as documented by observations, specimens, samples, and related information.

Getting started

• Quick Reference Guide
• Usage guides: how to use Darwin Core as Simple Darwin Core, Text (Darwin Core Archives), XML or RDF
• GitHub repository: where Darwin Core is maintained
• Normative term list: the document containing the full history of normative Darwin Core term definitions
• Distribution files: convenient files to start using Darwin Core