Those of you who also use the East Lancashire forum will have seen an announcement about a new facility for entering birds records online via the ELOC website.

Tony Cooper of ELOC emailed me during December 2006 kindly inviting ROC to make use of this facility.  Due to other pressures I wasn’t able to try the system out until during the Christmas break.  Having now done so I find myself very impressed with it.  It is pretty straightforward to use and has several features that save time when entering a set of records for a given site and date, for example.

The main advantage for me, personally, is that it allows me to download records from the ELOC database to a spreadsheet from which I can easily import the records into the database I use for producing the raw material for the ROC Bird Report.  I can assure you that entering these records into the Club database from paper or from forum postings takes up a lot of time!

Could I urge everyone who uses this forum for posting their bird records to go to the ELOC site, to register as a user and to have a go at entering their records via this new facility?  Although it may seem a little strange at first I think you’ll find it easy to learn.  It will involve a little more of a time commitment on your part, and the advantage is mainly to me in having the records easily importable, but it should help speed up the production of the bird report in the future.

This message is aimed mainly at those forum users or ROC members who do not send me their records in electronic form.  But, even if you do, you may find advantages to entering the data via the ELOC site rather than into a file on your computer.

Computers do crash and data can be lost.  The data entered online is backed up regularly so should always be available.   In the future it should be possible for me to provide those who have submitted records to the ELOC site with an electronic copy of their records or with a printout in some form or other if preferred.

You may also have seen that the Recent Sightings section of the East Lancs Forum has been in effect closed and users directed towards the ELOC site.  For Rossendale, I intend to keep the Rossendale Bird Sightings section open for sightings as I feel forums such as this have additional usefulness for keeping users in touch with what birds are about and allow feedback and comments, but I would ask posters to enter the data via the ELOC site as well.  Perhaps the postings to the forum could be used for more unusual birds, sightings of migrants etc, rather than being as detailed as at present?   

To get to the ELOC site follow this link http://www.eastlancsornithologists.org.uk/, click on the Records option on the left-hand menu (the Woodpecker) and click on the text near the top right (Click here) where you will be prompted to register or to log in once you have done so. NB please use your real first and last names so that other can see who logged the records.

I have created a document containing brief instructions for using the data entry facility (http://www.rossendalebird.freeuk.com/docs/ELOC_Data_Entry.doc) which you might like to print out, although there is a help page available on the site.

Please also note that if you find a Rossendale site missing email me rather than using the link on the ELOC site.  I've added some Rossendale sites already and I’ll crack on with others as soon as I am able to.

Many thanks for your continuing support and for your help with this exercise.

Contact me at jimormerod AT yahoo DOT co DOT uk if you need help or information.