Mollusc (marine) data for Great Britain and Ireland
Description in English
The dataset includes all the records which have so far been digitised. However, a significant portion of the Society's marine records still remain in paper format. Many of the records have never been held centrally, by the Marine Recorder; the custodians have been the respective sea area representatives. A programme is underway to trace some of these archives in order to facilitate their digitisation, along with records already held centrally but waiting to be processed. A programme is underway to get all records digitised and added to this collation which will be regularly updated as the work progresses. This dataset is constituted from data where the recorder has signed the Society's access policy and represents the majority of the data holdings. The remainder of the records are held in a separate dataset on the Gateway where access is more restricted.
Methods of data capture: The data have been collected by members of the Conchological Society as well as a wide range of other amateur and professional sources and are submitted often, but not always on customised recording cards. Recording is still continuing although no publications are expected at present.
Geographical coverage: Good coverage of the UK has been achieved by marine recording but digitised data are heavily biased towards the English Channel. It should be noted that large holdings covering Ireland and Scotland exist elsewhere and the Society's database is incomplete in these areas.
Temporal coverage: The majority of records were collected between 1970 and the present with peaks of recording activity at various times in this range. (See the Temporal metadata tab in the NBN metadata).
Data quality: Preliminary checking of the distribution maps of the data has been carried out by Jan Light. However, the checking process is ongoing and this should be borne in mind when using the data as they currently stand.
Additional information: The Society's dataset was used as the basis of the atlas publications: Seaward 1982, 1990.
Abstract in English
The records in this dataset are the results of the Conchological Society's Marine Census which has been run since 1876.