And does anyone else see my message twice, or is it only me?

In theory the concept behind Recorder should be submit once, distribute many times. The idea being that users should  be encouraged  to send their records to just one place from where it is distributed to all who need it. We are no doubt a long way from this, partly because the concept is not widely undertood or  promoted,  and partly because of the fact that not everyone is using a system where the concept can be consistently applied.   My hope is that one day we will get there and believe that all those involved should be doing what they can to encourage the approach. For a start we should be encouraging data sharing through system like Recorder and avoiding, where we can,  importing data with new keys where the data is known to exist elsewhere with unique identifiers (eg. in system like  Recorder and Mapmate).

Having data in a system twice is probably not that big a problem apart from the impact it has on space etc. and the effect on statistics. In fact data which is truly duplicated can be identified and action taken to remove or ignore  it. However, very often the same data is  recorded in different systems in  different ways. For example different taxononomy can be used or data can be consolidated in various ways, making finding duplicates difficult.   

Mike

Mike a typical data flow might be:

1. A local recorder sends data to their local group or LRC, often with the LRC helping to facilitate this process
2. A local group sends its data to the LRC, often with the LRC helping to facilitate this process
3. LRC exchanges data with National Schemes and Societies and NBN Gateway

The NBN Gateway is *one* distribution mechanism, depending on requirements. It typically holds a more "low-fi" version of the data and acts as a signposting mechanism to the data custodians who should be able to provide complete versions of the data. Local Record Centres are an ideal place to send records to because they are typically resourced to gather, clean, collate and distribute data, which is no small or easy task. National Schemes and Societies can also often accept data directly, depending on resources. As a local recorder or group, it's also good to be able to visit your LRC and get to know the people working there and strike up a relationship. LRCs can then, at the request of the data provider (i.e., the local group or local recorder), send clean and hopefully verified data on to National Schemes and or provision the data via the NBN Gateway.

Use of Recorder in all this helps because it uses NBN keys, the closest thing we have to the barcodes you mention. Every copy of Recorder goes out with a unique prefix code called the Site ID. The NBN Gateway uses a stripped down version of the NBN Data Model, which also uses NBN keys. Increasing numbers of National Schemes and Societies use Recorder. MapMate does not use NBN keys but does use a similar unique ID system which can be converted to NBN keys (but it's tricky to convert NBN keys to MapMate). If you're not using Recorder, I think you can apply to JNCC for a Site ID code, which makes it possible to create your own unique keys.