Gloucestershire Naturalists' Society Spider Records 1930 - 2013

Quality Control

The standard of identification skills amongst the recorders in this dataset would be of the highest, as David Haigh was an expert and would consult other national experts if in doubt. Records were largely legible and with very few spelling or grid reference inconsistencies, however there may still be some inconsistencies resulting from interpretation of the original handwriting. The latter have hopefully been corrected where a correct version is known; spelling of placenames may however still be inconsistent in places and/or use locally colloquial placenames rather than the Ordnance Survey map versions.

Method steps

1. Record cards were scanned, records deciphered and entered by volunteers, graded as to how confident they were about record transcription quality and then all checked by a different volunteer or member of GCER staff. The whole dataset was then subjected to a range of quality checks by GCER staff, including grid reference construction, placename consistency and removal of any records which were too doubtful or vague to include in the database (eg those with no date).