Darwin Core

Darwin Core is a standard for biodiversity data sharing maintained by the Darwin Core Maintenance Group. It includes a conceptual model, specifications and schemas for sharing via various data formats, and a glossary of terms (in other contexts these might be called properties, elements, fields, columns, attributes, or concepts) by providing identifiers, labels, and definitions.

Getting started

• Quick Reference Guide: easy entry to term definitions
• Conceptual Model: classes of information and how they are related
• Normative term list: full history of term definitions
• Usage guides:
  • Simple Darwin Core
  • Text (Darwin Core Archive)
  • Data Package (Darwin Core Data Package)
  • XML
  • RDF
• GitHub repository: where Darwin Core is maintained
  • List of open issues
  • List of open milestones
• Distribution files: CSV files of lists of term names