Apologies for a lack of contact from the NBN. We have had staffing shortages recently and have unintentionally missed some of these forum messages.

We are aware that there are issues with the NBN Gateway server, which is one of the main reasons we are moving away from the dated platform, to provide a stable and reliable Atlas platform in it's place. We apologise for the inconveniences that the Gateway has been causing.

The Atlas of Living Scotland is still a work in progress and is not intended to be a replacement for the NBN Gateway just yet, hence not all of the functionality being complete. We will notify users when we intend for the AoLS to be the main portal for accessing records.

We are gathering the user feedback that is being supplied to us, and we are working through making the suggested improvements to the site. It's a fairly large job, so we appreciate your patience during this time.

We are keen to keep all of the fields in the download available, as, even though they may be of no use to you, the ‘ordinary user’, they may be of use to others, for example those who may want to filter by certain details, such as Kingdom. The Atlases are built to serve the needs off all types of user, from basic, through 'ordinary', to expert, and we don't intend to narrow the resources available to individuals.

We do agree that OSGR and determiner name need to be added to the download. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, it is has now been logged in our feedback sheet and will be seen to in due course.

We appreciate that changing systems can cause turbulence, and ask that you are patient, and kindly provide feedback as you explore the site.

Murdo,

Thanks for your suggestion. I have recorded this in our feedback sheet and it will be discussed and addressed.

Ella

Hi Charlie,

Yes, info@als.scot has been the best place to send feedback, but I will also now be regularly checking here for comments.

Thanks for highlighting the missing end date, we will look into the method of data transfer and try to work out why it's been missed off.

Ella

As promised, here are more deficiencies in ALS.

G5 allows generation of lists and export of records from the following predefined areas (*** are those allowed in ALS currently; * marks those that are perhaps irrelevant to Scotland).

Designated and Protected Areas
Areas of Special Scientific Interest in Northern Ireland*
Local Nature Reserves in Wales*
Marine Conservation Zones
National Nature Reserves in England***
National Nature Reserves in Scotland***
National Nature Reserves in Wales***
Nature Conservation Marine Protected Areas
Ramsar sites in Great Britain***
Ramsar sites in Northern Ireland***
Recommended Marine Conservation Zones
Sites of Special Scientific Interest in England***
Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Scotland***
Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Wales***
Special Areas of Conservation in Great Britain***
Special Areas of Conservation in Northern Ireland***
Special Protection Areas in Great Britain***
Special Protection Areas in Northern Ireland***

Local Wildlife Sites
Lancashire Biological Heritage Sites*
Lancashire Local Geodiversity Sites*
Leicestershire Wildlife Sites*
Liverpool Local Wildlife Sites (proposed)*
Local Nature Reserves in England***
North Merseyside Local Wildlife Sites*
Scottish Wildlife Trust reserves
Sites of Biological Importance (SBI) in Greater Manchester as at 2015-04-28*
SWT Scottish Borders Local Wildlife Site Survey data 1996-2000 - Site boundaries

Organisation Sites
Aggregate Industries Sites
John Muir Trust Property Boundaries
National Trust for Scotland Properties
National Trust Ownership 2014*
Plantlife Nature Reserves in the UK
RSPB Nature Reserves in the UK

Administrative and Landscape
Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England*
Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Wales*
Character Areas for England*
Common Land Boundaries for England*
Exmoor National Park*
Galloway and Southern Ayrshire Biosphere Reserve Boundary
Heritage Coasts in England*
Heritage Coasts in Wales*
Important Bird Areas in the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man
Important Plant Areas in the UK
Integrated Site Assessment Features with Species Records
Lakes in the United Kingdom
Local Environmental Records Centre Boundaries of the UK
National Parks in England***
National Parks in Scotland***
Nature Improvement Areas
North Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty - Trial boundary*
Scottish Unitary Authority boundaries
SNH Natural Heritage Futures
UK LBAP Boundaries
Watsonian Vice Counties
Welsh Unitary Authority boundaries*

That leaves 22 (if I have counted correctly) that are not available in ALS, and at least some of these are essential to have there.  Please reinstate access in ALS to all the predefined areas that are available through G5.  If there are good reasons to remove any of them, please ask the users first.

*********

Perhaps not surprisingly since the ALS was lifted from Australia, implementation of the OS grid seems to be seriously deficient.  I can find no way of identifying an OS hectad.  In desperation I tried searching for NH45 on the page http://records.als.scot/explore/your-ar … LL_SPECIES   I was directed to Nowshera - Mardan Rd, Risalpur 23200, Pakistan, and told ‘[no species found]’.  I am still wondering why I was not surprised at this news, but entertained myself by counting the cars on the N45 (why is the ‘H’ irrelevant?).  Please implement a routine that will allow hectad lists, as exists currently on G5.

*********

If you try to define your own rectangle at http://records.als.scot/search#tab_spatialSearch, and then call up a species map on the OS grid, e.g. http://records.als.scot/occurrences/sea … ab_mapView you see that the OS grid squares are not parallel to the rectangle’s sides.  Rectangle drawn on lat/long.  Records plotted on OS grid.  It might show you what you want, but it is not a pretty sight.  While you are there, try to navigate the taxon selector on the RHS, and hope you are not wanting a map of Xylaria or Zygaena.  Please implement area selection on the OS grid.  And please give us a taxon selector that is at least no less easy to use than the one in G5.

This is really all far less beta testing than design specification, but I hope there will be assurance from NBN staff that these points have been logged and will be dealt with.

Murdo

Further to Murdo's comments above regarding fields in downloaded data, as datasets will be allocated to different licenses I feel it is imperative that the license under which the data are released is included as a field in with the actual records themselves, not just as a link to an adjoining metadata csv. Not doing so only increases the potential of misuse of data, particularly data shared under a cc-by-nc license.

I am pleased to see the discussion about ALS in an open forum. Some of us have been sending in feedback since the site was launched and although we have had polite replies, I am unable to see any significant progress in the structure/functionality of the site and it remains unusable.
Although the NBN development team appear to be optimistic about the site being fully functionable and fit for use by April next year, on the basis of current progress I have my doubts and sincerely hope that Gateway 5 is fixed so that we have access to NBN data beyond your projected implementation date.

Christine

Thanks, Ella.  The obvious question is 'Who thought that this opaque and convoluted process is any sort of improvement over what we have in G5?'.  In G5 I can get the hectad list in 5 quick clicks, and I don't need to type anything.  In ALS it takes 10 clicks and typing 4 characters. And then if I want to look at another hectad a good part of the process has to be repeated after undoing what I have just done.

And of course the procedure itself is about as opaque as it could be.  'Add to map', followed by 'Layers' is not a clear intuitive interface.  Compare it with G5, itself several steps removed from friendliness in comparison with G4, where you 'Browse sites' (reasonably obvious), see a map with grid squares which invite you to click, and there you are.

In G5 I can, with one additional click, get a list of my chosen taxon group.  Is that available in ALS?  Not obviously.

A few days ago I was looking for a help function.  There is none on the home page, but I see there is one on the spatial link.  The page it opens (http://www.ala.org.au/spatial-portal-he … g-started/) is testament to what a wondrous thing ALS is, but frankly I don't want all these wondrous bits of digital bling, and nor does anyone I know.  Nor do I see a help topic ‘How to get hectad lists’, perhaps because the whole thing is still thoroughly rooted in Oz.  I do want *quick* access to species maps based on the OS grid, to be able to see *all* the relevant fields of individual records, and to download lists for defined taxa within hectads, VCs and other specified areas of relevance.

We had that in G4, along with a whole lot of useful things that were removed in the 'once-new improved' G5.  Now the few useful features that we have in G5 (when it works) are in danger of being lost in the 'new improved' ALS.

(In passing, I tried to get a VC list through that spatial page.  Helpfully – for someone who, unlike me, does not live in the middle of VC106 - it showed the VC area in red.  Unhelpfully – for me – I can’t download any list.  I am invited to get ‘metadata’ which appear in a window headed ‘Atlas of Living Australia’, containing no metadata at all, and the first link on the page sends me to http://www.ala.org.au/.)

If all this is not incontrovertible evidence that ALS has not even completed the elementary stages of basic design, should never have been launched on May, and is extremely unlikely to be in any usable form even by the end of 2017, I don’t know what else is needed.

Please listen to *the people on whom this resource depends*, and give us what we want - not tell us what we are going have whether we want it or not, whether it is useful or not.  This is not to demand that the bling is removed – some folk clearly like it.  However, a small amount of elementary programming would allow folk like me and my colleagues to click a link that would give exactly the quick access I mentioned above, while bypassing all the irrelevant (and often bandwidth-eating) glitz, and get speedily and with minimum fuss to the information that we need in order to carry out our work.

M.

Murdo,

Thank you for your comments. We very much appreciate you testing out the system, but, as has been pointed out many times, the Atlas of Living Scotland is still very much under development and we are well aware that it does not yet have the full level of functionality that any of us desire. Developing the infrastructure takes time and there is a large amount of work going on behind the scenes that may not be apparent to you. The Secretariat is only a small team and the Atlas of Living Scotland is only one aspect of the work we are doing.

We welcome the feedback, but it would be useful for everyone involved if criticism is more constructive. All feedback is recorded and added to our issues log for action. We do not want anyone to feel that they are wasting their time, so I would respectfully suggest that you continue to use the Gateway for the time being until we have greatly increased the Atlas functionality. We will be providing regular updates on Atlas development through the website and the forum.

All future posts on the Atlas of Living Scotland should be posted here:
http://forums.nbn.org.uk/viewforum.php?id=45

Jo