Worcestershire Record No. 24 April 2008  p. 3

Simon Wood

As you are probably aware we are still running Recorder 2002 as our main data storage system, resources permitting this year we will make the transition to Recorder 6. This is a more robust version in the Recorder family and should provide the capacity for our data holdings to continue to expand well into the future. Those of you who currently run Recorder 2002 at home may want to upgrade also but I shall make the change here first, trial it and provide you with feedback.

The ongoing development of a Geographical Information System for both WBRC and Worcestershire Wildlife Trust continues to go from strength to strength, this software allows spatial data to be displayed, queried and applied to contextual maps, giving access to, for example: digital versions of the Special Wildlife Site Inventory for the county.

The supply of records to users has again continued to increase, especially those commercial enquiries to Ecological and Environmental Consultants. As I have mentioned before WBRC is trying to expand on the number and variety of service level agreements we have, British Waterways have recently licensed data from us for a year and hopefully this will continue into the future. Worcester City Council countryside staff recently started recording their own data on Recorder 6, we are providing them with training and ongoing support and the data will be incorporated into our main data holdings.

I have mentioned in a previous edition of Worcestershire Record the important issue of data flow procedures between individuals and WBRC, we identified and solved a number of immediate problems but I would like to make a repeat request for all who pass data through to other recorders locally, or national groups and WBRC to just make themselves known as an additional safeguard against duplication of records and computerisation effort, many thanks.

If you haven’t sent in records before, the basic facts we need to know are:

Records can be sent to WBRC for inputting to the database on paper recording forms or computerised records via email on spreadsheet (there is a downloadable Excel sheet on our website). However, please make sure as a minimum you have the individual fields mentioned previously. Feel free to contact myself or Jenni on 01905 759759, e-mail records@wbrc.org.uk to discuss any aspects of data collation or indeed other issues relating to WBRC.

I hope you all have a very productive (and less wet) recording season in 2008.