1 Topic by PhilippaTomlinson

  • PhilippaTomlinson
  • PhilippaTomlinson
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  • From: Isle of Man
  • Registered: 18-11-2010
  • Posts: 54

Topic: field recording

Hello,
I need some advice about field recording for consultancy or research work.
What do people do these days when doing field survey recording where the data needs to go into a spreadsheet not onto iRecord or similar. Does anyone have Recorder6 on their field iPad or tablet and type the data straight into a Recorder6 recording form?
Does anyone have a simple recording form set up in Google docs with accompanying data dictionaries to make inputting easier? Or some other system that they could let me have.
If anyone could send me examples of what they do I would be most grateful.
From my point of view as someone who collates other people's field data my main concern is that their data comes to me in a format that will seamlessly load into Recorder6.... but that so rarely happens.
Any advice or comments gratefully received.
Philippa

Dr Philippa Tomlinson
Biological Records Manager
Manx Biological Recording Partnership

PhilippaTomlinson's Website

2 Reply by PaulBarrington

  • PaulBarrington
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  • From: Greater Manchester LRC
  • Registered: 25-07-2012
  • Posts: 71

Re: field recording

Hi Philippa,

iRecord and iNaturalist would be easiest I suspect, as you are aware though the top copy then becomes iRecord or iNaturalist. If you then exported the data to clean it up ready for Recorder6 import you'd have to be careful not to push these records through a dataflow that leads them back to iRecord or the NBN as a duplicate. For instance we push a lot of our records through taxon recording schemes for verification so rarely push data directly to the NBN as it gets there via other avenues.

In Greater Manchester we built an iRecord style recording website which works in the field so long as there is an Internet connection. We researched various alternatives back in 2018 but there wasn't much available that could parse grid references at different precisions, would come with a NHM taxon dictionary built in, would filter relavant sex/stage information based upon the taxon group, allow attachments against surveys and individual records etc. For a simple dataset (who, what, where, when) it's actually pretty complex and niche what we collect.

Good luck

Paul (GMLRC)

PaulBarrington's Website