Christine Johnston (NBN Scottish Liaison Officer) and Ellen Wilson (chair of SBIF (Scottish Biodiversity Information Forum)) recently visited Orkney to meet members of the biological data community in order to introduce the SBIF Review and the NBN Atlas.
Between the 28th and 30th November we were hosted by Sydney Gauld of the Orkney Wildlife Information & Records Centre and over the course of the three days we visited and listened to recorders, consultants, record centre staff, a museum trustee, academics, and people who work for NGOs, the local authority, the harbour authority and the statutory agencies, to gain a better understanding of what they do, what they need, and what problems they face in accessing and handling data, and to hear their ideas for improvement. We were particularly pleased that Paul Harvey of the Shetland Biological Records Centre was able to join us for the first day.
On the evening of the 29th we presented talks about the Review and the Atlas at a meeting in Kirkwall, and took part in a Q & A session with the audience, an extremely well-informed and knowledgeable group of recorders, of whom about a third were county recorders for different taxon groups.
We received a very positive response to our visit. Everyone we spoke to was passionate about biological data and over the course of the three days we realised there was a degree of commonality across the sectors in the problems experienced and also in the ideas for improvement. Some of the messages we heard were:
- data users want to be sure they have accessed all the available data, and to receive that data in relevant formats
- there is much data that is not readily available; examples given were data collected for Environmental Impact Assessments, data held up by the verification process, or until after formal publication of a paper, and paper records that are as yet unmobilised
- there is a need for transparency about how current data flows actually work so that people can share data once and know that it will become accessible to all
- verification of records is vitally important and there is a need to increase verifier capacity and provide training in tools for verification
- there is a need for a speedy route for the dissemination of invasive species records
- local support for recorders and local interpretation of data is crucial
- there is a need to develop an easy way to extract records from social media posts as so much information about wildlife is being posted on the islands’ Facebook groups
I suspect most Network News readers will be familiar with some or indeed all of the above points and ways forward to address them need to be identified. All the information we gathered will be included in the SBIF Review and will inform the set of recommendations from the Review that will be published later next year.
The talk about the NBN Atlas was well-received and some useful feedback was given to us by the audience. The Atlas is being developed to facilitate data flow, data use and data analysis, but it is important that around the Atlas we, as a Network, build a consensus about the infrastructure that is required to support an effective data flow at all stages from collection to use, and how we should interact with this. Although focused on Scotland, the findings of the SBIF Review will help us reach that consensus and be of use more widely. A questionnaire to gather information for the Review from as many people as possible will be available in December – please do take part to share your needs and ideas with us.
Thanks very much to everyone who took time to meet us on Orkney and special thanks to Sydney for the tremendous amount of work he put in to support our visit. The initial idea for the visit was raised at BRISC’s 2015 conference, and one year on we are pleased to have fulfilled it.