Notes From Nature Talk

Ornithology questions

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57

    Hi,

    Coupla ornithology questions, can anyone help?

    Abbreviated Latin names: When they follow a similar name given in full (i.e. the context makes them unambiguous), do you want them transcribing in full? E.g. Copsychus a. albospecularis following Copsychus albospecularis inexpectatus; expand to Copsychus albospecularis albospecularis (if we've looked it up and the bird does exist)?

    Gender: why no UI to transcribe male or female?

    Date format: transcribe exactly as written, or standardise in some way? For now I'm transcribing as written, i.e. 16 10 30 not 16 October 1930.

    Posted

  • Mr._Kevvy by Mr._Kevvy

    I'd say if there's ever a standard date format to use everywhere it's Universal Date Format (yyyy-mm-dd) as then there's never any ambiguity over which is the month/day. It's also database-friendly as it's self-sorting, being arranged in most-to-least significant in reading order like counting numbers. It's the ISO standard for Coordinated Universal Time among others so is the standard for scientific use.

    Posted

  • HelenBennett57 by HelenBennett57

    Thanks both!

    Mr Kevvy, I totally agree and probably annoy people at work by including dates in filenames in this format when I need them to sort neatly.

    Bonnie, thank you, for purposes of this specific project that sounds like the right thing to do. I guess it'd be easy to standardise the entered data later.

    Posted