The goal of iRecord is to make it easier for wildlife sightings to be collated, checked by experts and made available to support research and decision-making at local and national levels. The key features are:
- Record all the wildlife you see
- Securely store and keep track of your records
- Benefit from automatic data checks and review by experts
- Share your sightings with the recording community
- Explore dynamic maps and graphs of your data
- Explore data shared by other recorders in your area and/or for species groups you are interested in
- Export your data in a number of formats
- Contribute to science and conservation
The site is continually being improved and ideas for further development are very welcome. The following article by John Bratton gives his feedback on using the site over the past 8 weeks.
The good points:
1. Data entry is fast and simple.
2. The link to aerial photos is brilliant. It is easier to get a precise grid reference from an aerial photo than from OS maps, assuming the aerial photo layer has been correctly placed on the OS grid. I've adjusted several of my grid references after seeing the yellow box was not quite covering the correct pool or tree.
3. It is useful to have the option of adding a photograph to allow genuine verification.
Room for improvement:
1. Data entry would be quicker if “Certain” was the default, or if a list of records could be designated Certain in one click.
2. It would be useful to be able to lock the species name, especially if you are a single-species recorder such as a water vole surveyor.
3. Some important fields are missing from the data entry screens. Life-stage linked to abundance is an important omission. There should be a column for determiner separate from the recorder: at present, iRecord assumes the person entering the records is the recorder, whereas a determiner may wish to enter records based on specimens found by someone else. Also it can be important to say which reference work was used for identification: it could help future naturalists assess the validity of records affected by taxonomic changes, as well as weed out the beetles identified from The complete guide to British wildlife. All this information could be placed in the Comments box, but it is more likely to be given and is easier to analyse if the data entry screen has a field for it.
4. It would be useful to have synonyms in the species list. I'm sure that Radix balthica is still Lymnaea peregra to many reliable general naturalists. But the matter of synonyms is not simple. It will be interesting to see how existing records are reallocated when a species is split in the future.
The league table
I'm undecided on whether this is a sound idea. It could encourage too competitive a mentality, attracting people who want to be top of the league rather than wanting to contribute to biological recording. I-Spot's scoring system has led to some participants using gamesmanship to gain points. Nevertheless, I must admit that seeing I could move a few places up the league table if I added another ten records has encouraged me to use my limited web time on data entry.
I feel it would be fairer if the league table was based on number of records rather than number of species: at present, someone donating a lifetime's dataset of British snake records will be languishing in the relegation zone one place above the ant-lion enthusiast, while someone who has wasted petrol on touring the country to tick off all the British flora at known localities would be top of the league. Obviously, if the table does switch to using number of records, there will have to be a way of excluding moth-trappers. Perhaps a few BRC coffee breaks could be spent considering more complicated systems to encourage serious gathering of records rather than twitching or repetitious recording, e.g. points awarded based on number of species-hectad-year combinations.
Relationship to national schemes
The success of iRecord will be determined largely by how national recording scheme organisers take to it. As with all such datasets, its value depends on its reliability. If the scheme organisers don't welcome it and don't indicate which records are acceptable, it could be viewed as unreliable. Scheme organisers are better placed to comment on this aspect than I am. I can see iRecord reducing contact between recorders and national scheme organisers, and they certainly need a means of contacting each other, for the purposes of querying records and offering thanks and encouragement. It would also be useful if recorders could contact each other to foster a feeling of being part of a recording community. E-mail addresses would suffice.
There are a few national recording schemes to which I feel a loyalty, and I will continue to send records direct to those. I think the main value of iRecord to me is as a clearing house for all the peripheral records: the few mammals from here and there, the plant records noted down in distant vice counties while on a train journey, the miscellaneous invertebrates that I never get around to parcelling up and dispatching to the dozens of recording schemes, and of course the species that have no national scheme. By placing these on iRecord, they are in the national archive and I can sleep soundly, confident that they are within the efficient, fast, reliable information dissemination system that is the BRC/LERC/country conservation agency network.
John Bratton, Menai Bridge
(Currently in silver medal position)
Since receiving John’s feedback, the iRecord development team has already added the ability to lock the species name. The team is now reviewing what additional fields to include on the input forms, in light of feedback from John and other users. If you have any further suggestions please visit the forum and add your ideas.