[Taxacom] Announcing Specify 7 for the Web

[Bob Mesibov]

Hi, Fred.

I've seen several different methods for dealing with date uncertainty, in museum databases. One is to have single, separate fields for 'start' and 'finish' dates. The most popular method in Australia is to fix one date in a date field, then expand on this in a 'notes' field. For example, a pitfall trapping that ran from 15 January 2014 to 15 March 2014 might have *either* date in the date field (museum preferences vary), then 'pitfall trapping 15 January - 15 March 2014' in a 'notes' field.

The issue of 3 fields vs 1 field for dates seems to be connected with who designed the data structure. A database person might prefer atomising a date into year, month and day, because *storing* a date is different from *displaying* or *reporting* a date. You can easily manipulate atomised data, but parsing strung-together data can be a pain. Museum data structures have often been designed by curators, who typically see a 'date' as a single string, to be entered, stored, displayed and reported as a single string.
-- 
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and
School of Agricultural Science, University of Tasmania
Home contact:
PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195