MIDS

There are 4 informations of MIDS:

1. General MIDS indicators for the (sub)collection.
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2. MIDS related to the Geographic zones
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3. MIDS related to the Statigraphic units
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4. MIDS related to the Storage categories
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The definition of the MIDS levels are :
 

MIDS-0: Minimally digitised

Modern mass-digitisation techniques are based on imaging all specimens and their labels and creating a basic DSO by interpreting any identifiers (such as barcodes) among the labels. At this level the DSO only contains metadata and zero or more media files. This level includes the following Darwin Core3 (DwC) elements that are related to the process of digitisation and collection management rather than the specimen.

1. DwC:occurrenceID – a NSId
2. DwC:institutionCode – from e.g., Index Herbariorum and other catalogues.
3. DwC:collectionCode – if exists, given by the institution.
4. DwC:catalogNumber – automatically readable from the specimen label; must be attached to the specimen prior to imaging.

MIDS-1: Regularly digitised

Includes MIDS-0 but adds basic data elements that can be entered in a bulk operation by a human operator for a number of DSOs. In other words, MIDS-1 does not include any data that must be read from the label(s) attached to the specimen(s) but instead are inherited from collection level labels. Most scientific collections include this information in their boxes and folders (plants), or drawers and unit trays (insects). These elements typically are:

1. DwC:scientificName – at some taxonomic level
2. DwC:higherGeography – at some accuracy such as ‘Europe’

3. DwC:collectionCode – within the institution. If a donated collection is being digitised as a whole this could be also the name of the collector, i.e., the same value as in DwC:recordedBy

MIDS-2: Regular

Includes MIDS-1 and the most important data elements describing the specimen and the collecting event, and which have been transcribed and interpreted from the specimen labels.

These data include location, date, collector name, and scientific name, and involve using many more DwC elements, so we do not list them here. Optionally, the DwC:dynamicProperties element includes metadata of the quality control of the transcription result, following the ISO 2859 standard (e.g., Mononen et al. 2014) or some other protocol.

MIDS-3: Extended

Includes MIDS-2 but adds interpretations made using external information sources (beyond what can be determined from specimen and collection labels).

Example of this is finding the geographic coordinates of the collecting locality through research on gazetteers or field notebooks. Also an interpretation is asserting a taxonomic concept to the specimen (DwC:taxonID) and the currently valid scientific name (MIDS-1 and MIDS-2 level scientific names are not necessarily the valid ones). Mapping text in the verbatim DwC elements from MIDS-2 into the corresponding well-structured DwC elements and updating their values to the current situation also counts as interpretation.

Additional data:

Additional data:Including images and additional media such as sounds, chemical extracts, DNAbarcodes, 3D models, and OCR results does not fit in the above classification. Such media can be added at any MIDS level and should be flagged up separately in metadata. Another form of data that should be considered are links between specimens and external data sources.