Locality Documentation

How To Edit Coordinates and Max Error of a Locality

Manually

This is the method most commonly used for large accessions when a spreadsheet from the collector or curator is supplied. These spreadsheets will often contain the latitude, longitude, and max error, so this can be a huge timesaver. Even though this saves you the trouble of having to georeference the locality, it never hurts to double-check that the supplied information is correct.

Make a note of all the information displayed above. In addition to ensuring you are working on the right entry, it also provides you with a general overview of the data you may have to correct. Clicking [Edit Locality] will allow us make these changes.

Pro Tip NULL is acceptable in Max Error, and cannot be confused with “infinitely precise.” However, no location is is “sizeless” and we want an easy way to say “this one may be useful because it is specific enough” or more often, “that one is not useful for me because it is really only known to the continental scale.” The only really defensible way to interpret NULL error is to make no assumptions: somewhere on the planet, probably. If you have some indication that you are in fact dealing with something smaller than an entire planet, make a guess and support it in georeference method - you’ve just made your data more useful to to the people who are happy with continent-scale data, but not so much with planet-scale. (And if your guess falls out of some analysis, maybe they’ll tell you about it.)

Using GeoLocate

More often than not, you will be working with individual or small numbers of specimens. In these cases, you may not have a handy spreadsheet to reference for coordinates or error. You can use an external source such as Google Maps or ACME Mapper, or you can use the handy GeoLocate applet on the Edit Locality page. For a review of best georeferencing practices, consult the georeferencing tutorial.

Tutorial Videos ↗️

How to fix locality coordinates in a catalog record

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