[NHCOLL-L:1376] Re: annotation dates

[Jim Croft]

>         Problem is, all the dates of annotation were indicated as  the year
>"01". Not "2001". (And of course, not "1901", etc.) Anybody else have a
>problem with this?

It is indeed unfortunate that people do not use ISO compliant dates all the 
time... and with the memory of the Year 00 so recently behind us, and all...

There are two common international date/time formats out there to chose 
from, the ISO and the Internet, both starting from the year and working 
through the month to the day, both specifying a 4-digit year.

The time is fast approaching where specimens are not handled or annotated 
in isolation from their associated databases record, so perhaps the best we 
can do  is to make sure it is complete and unambiguous in our databases... 
maybe with an annotation to the effect you have made this correction in the 
database, if recording the original ambiguity is important to you.

Now if you think that is a problem, just try and retrospectively sort out 
the Yanks inconsistent tendency to place the month first in a written date 
string.  When someone finds a way to disentangle the 3rd of May and the 5th 
or March from 03-05-2001, I would be really happy...

... and when you have done that, we can start on the need to use of A4 
paper...  and then there is the miles, gallons, pounds thing...  billions 
and dollars and missing Mars because of archaic measurement systems is a 
bit sad, but getting it wrong in a herbarium, that could be a real 
catastrophe...  :)

jim

~ Jim Croft ~ jrc at anbg.gov.au ~ 02-62465500 ~ www.anbg.gov.au/jrc/ ~