The Darwin Core standard[2] has been used to mobilize the vast majority of specimen occurrence and observational records within the GBIF network.
[3] The Darwin Core standard was originally conceived to facilitate the discovery, retrieval, and integration of information about modern biological specimens, their spatio-temporal occurrence, and their supporting evidence housed in collections (physical or digital).
As a glossary of terms, the Darwin Core provides stable semantic definitions with the goal of being maximally reusable in a variety of contexts.
This means that Darwin Core may still be used in the same way it has historically been used, but may also serve as the basis for building more complex exchange formats, while still ensuring interoperability through a common set of terms.
For example, retrieving 260,000 records via TAPIR takes about nine hours, issuing 1,300 http requests to transfer 500 MB of XML-formatted data.