NEW (Sept.16,1996): Please also check the HISCOM website's HISPID pages for further develepments.

(Revised version of letter sent to subgroup members, August 4, 1996)

There are some exiting news:. Barry Conn and the `Herbarium Information Systems Committee' (HISCOM, a committee of representatives from all major Australian herbaria) have prepared a draft for a new version of the HISPID Herbarium Interchange standard, which is to be published shortly (probably before the meeting in Toronto). This is the third version of HISPID which is extensively used in Australian herbaria and incorporates the experiences gained there. Furthermore, Barry's involvement in TDWG, particularly in the development of ITF version 2 guaranties close adherance to existing TDWG standards.

After having a first look at the document, I am in favour of using it as the base for a TDWG herbarium accessions exchange standard (creation of which was the original purpose of this subgroup). Our discussion could than concentrate on the general collection standard and the metadata standard.

Several possibilities exist:

1. Proposal for outright adoption of HISPID 3 by TDWG

1. Proposal to adopt parts of HISPID 3

1. Elaborating a supplement to HISPID 3 and adopting it together with it

1. Collaborating in the elaboration of a revised version (HISPID 4),which becomes the TDWG standard.

You can download the draft (WinWord 6) document (also available as a Pkzip-compressed file).

Please do comment.