Requirements for collection date in v1

[PipBrewer]

Aslak Kappel Hansen has requested that collection date be included in v1 of the transcription platform (email dated 11/09/2024). He has said that this is an essential feature in order to achieve the goals of the project. RE_ Meeting notes about transcribing Danish dung beetles (with collection managers on 15_09_2024) involving changes to Specify UI.pdf

Joaquim advised PB that Specify can accept dates as full dates (DD/MM/YYYY) or as partial dates (MM/YY or YY).

NHMD Entomology Specify UI has collected from and to dates and these should be included in the UI.

We need to decide how to deal with cases such as: Spring 1978 Probably 2003

My suggestion would be for the first one to put 1978 as the date and the rest as verbatim in the Remarks Table (with the source being "specimen label"). However, this would involve having a notes and source field included in the UI (potentially one which can accomodate multiple remarks).

@AstridBVW Check with the collection managers how they would like to deal with this?

[AstridBVW]

@PipBrewer My suggestion would be to treat the date information the same way as the locality information, i.e. on the transcription platform UI have a verbatim date field (text field) where you would write all the date info verbatim, and a startDate and endDate field (date fields) that can take dates to multiple precisions (dd-MM-yyyy, MM-yyyy, yyyy) where you would put the interpreted date info. For "Spring 1978" you could just put in the year, but you could also use both the startDate and endDate fields and add the months to cover "spring", i.e. 03-1978 to 05-1978.

The Specify datamodel includes a verbatimDate field (text field) that would be appropriate to use for this, and we can add a verbatim date source field as we did for verbatim locality on the Specify UI (where we would put "Specimen label").

I can check with them what they would prefer tomorrow.

[AstridBVW]

I asked Anders, and he thought it would be logical to have a verbatim date field. However, he pointed out that you should only be required to put data in the verbatim date field if the date on the label needs interpretation in order to be put in the start date/end date fields. If the date follows one of the normal date formats (dd-MM-yyyy, MM-yyyy, yyyy), you should not have to put this info in the verbatim date field as well. He also suggested that I ask Aslak about how obscure date info should be interpreted since he is the one who will be using the data. I will see if I can catch him today.

UPDATE: I have talked to Aslak. He will be using the data from the startDate/endDate fields for his project, he does not need the verbatim info. But he agrees that if an interpretation of the date info on the label is necessary, it would be good to retain the verbatim date info in a specific field. However, both he and Jan have pointed out that it is rare to have these obscure dates on the entomology labels. They mostly follow the normal date format.

[AstridBVW]

Regarding Verbatim Date: We agreed at our catch up meeting today that we will use the Specify datamodel field verbatimDate for the Verbatim Date information from the transcription platform. I will add the following fields to the Specify UI (in the Collecting Information table):

1. verbatimDate (string)
2. Verbatim Date Source (one of the available text fields) as a read-only pick list with similar value as the Verbatim Locality Source field

I will make sure to check with the collection managers that they approve of this addition.

Regarding Start Date and End Date: Joaquim has made it possible to add fields of the date type to the transcription platform. Thus, I will make sure to add fields for Start Date and End Date when creating the project. I will also add a text field for Verbatim Date. Future documentation for this will be part of ticket #11 .

[AstridBVW]

Fields for Verbatim Date and Verbatim Date Source have now been added to the Specify UI for NHMD Entomology.