RECORDING – WHAT’S THE POINT?
Biological recording should be more than collecting train numbers, shouldn’t it? For some it starts as a compulsion to make lists. For others it may be the need to name something. Good reasons, but why not make it “valuable”. Worth doing for the sake of science, or someone else’s interest, or conservation. ADD VALUE by sharing what you record! Pass your records to the County Recorder. Or put them on a database. Or send them to the local records centre. To be of any interest to anyone else a basic biological record must have the four basic components: WHO – WHAT- WHERE – WHEN. The WHO tells everyone which person “collected” the record. It is a person or organisation that one can go back to to query the record, or elaborate it. When it comes to the verification of data on a database, it gives the authority doing the verification an idea of how reliable the record is if it is a known person or group. The WHAT tells us a species or genera name. Unless a biological group has a ...