We continue our recent tradition of hosting a Darwin Core workshop combining tutorials with facilitated discussion of current issues and future directions for the standard. This year, we will have two sessions. The first will begin with an overview of Darwin Core and its extensions, and of different ways (e.g. spreadsheets; RDF) to represent Darwin Core data. This will be followed by a presentation examining how Darwin Core is used in practise, which will illustrate the variability in the way the standard is interpreted, and also suggest the most important documentation gaps that need to be filled. We will then give an overview of of the Apple Core guidelines for using Darwin Core in the context of herbarium records. There will be ample time for questions, and for discussion regarding how to move forward on documentation. The second session will include a presentation on recent proposed changes to Darwin Core around improving the flow of alien species data, followed by discussion on how best to move forward on these proposals. Time permitting, there will also be opportunity to discuss other issues in the tracker or on people's minds, such as the W3C's emerging guidelines for tabular data, interoperability between Darwin Core and other types of data, and next steps in DwC/RDF.
