<div dir="ltr">Hi Mireia - Philosophy aside...<div><br></div><div>Arctos (which is multi-institutional and web-based) does allow curators to 'encumber' different kinds of data (mostly entire record, collector, coordinates, year), and we track who encumbered the date, when it was encumbered, the encumberance type, reason for encumberance, and an expiration. This is a case by case basis and the reasons vary among curators and collections. However, of the ~1.8M records currently in Arctos, <0.1% are encumbered. With regard to data cleaning, we try hard in Arctos to set high standards for data quality through the use of authorities and controlled vocabularies. Errors of course do happen, though. <div style>
<font color="#000000" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div style><font color="#000000" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">VertNet will take whatever data are not encumbered from a collection and publish those. If the data are encumbered, they will not be published in VertNet. VertNet has developed a set of data cleaning tools that are used to clean (i.e., standardize) data before publishing to facilitate searching on VertNet using Darwin Core standard. These 'migrators' apply only if the collection resource is hosted on the VertNet instance of Integrated Publishing Toolkit where we are in a position to help with the migration and publication process. If collections or institutions host their own IPT, they don't take advantage of the migrators currently. However, we are hoping to get funds to automate those migrators so that anyone can use them to help assess data quality for their collections.</font></div>
<div style><font color="#000000" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div style><font color="#000000" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Best,</font></div><div style><font color="#000000" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Carla</font></div>
<div style><font color="#000000" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div style><font color="#000000" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div style><font color="#1f497d" face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:15px"><br>
</span></font></div><div style><font color="#1f497d" face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:15px"><br></span></font></div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Ellen Paul <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ellen.paul@verizon.net" target="_blank">ellen.paul@verizon.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">And by the way, this is NOT hypothetical. When birders discover<br>
something interesting and word goes out on the listserves, hundreds or<br>
thousands of people will get in the car or on the plane...happens all<br>
the time. A Kelp Gull (very common in its South American range) showed<br>
up here in Maryland a few years back. People came from all over the<br>
country to see it, and locals took to feeding it to keep it around the<br>
dock. That White-throated Needletail that showed up in the Outer<br>
Hebrides (only to get nailed by a wind turbine) - remember - Outer<br>
Hebrides - not exactly around the corner - drew hundreds of people<br>
between the time it showed up and the time it flew into the turbine.<br>
Here in the U.S., people ran from all over the eastern seaboard to see a<br>
Green Mango that showed up in North Carolina and I'll bet that right<br>
now, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge has a line of cars from<br>
the parking lot to the highway, filled with birders wanting to see that<br>
Rufous-necked Woodrail (sorry - have to book my flight now...).<br>
<br>
Now, if the birders discovered it, they are entitled to share the info<br>
if they like. My point is that when the info is made available, people<br>
do use it. And birders are smart, tech-savvy people. If you think that<br>
they won't find and use your databases, you are being naive.<br>
<div class="im HOEnZb"><br>
Ellen<br>
<br>
Ellen Paul<br>
Executive Director<br>
The Ornithological Council<br>
Email: <a href="mailto:ellen.paul@verizon.net">ellen.paul@verizon.net</a><br>
"Providing Scientific Information about Birds"<br>
<a href="http://www.nmnh.si.edu/BIRDNET" target="_blank">http://www.nmnh.si.edu/BIRDNET</a>"<br>
<br>
<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br>Carla Cicero, Ph.D<br>Staff Curator of Birds<br>Museum of Vertebrate Zoology<br>3101 Valley Life Sciences Building<br>University of California<br>Berkeley, CA 94720-3160<br>
TEL: (510) 642-7868<br>FAX: (510) 643-8238<br><br><a href="http://mvz.berkeley.edu/" target="_blank">http://mvz.berkeley.edu/</a><br><a href="http://carlacic.googlepages.com/home" target="_blank">http://carlacic.googlepages.com/home</a><br>
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