geographical coordinates and accuracy

[Aysha at]

Like many of you, we are recording historical data from specimens in our
collection. We are using Biota (and are very happy with it) to database the
Trichoptera collection at the University of Minnesota. As does everyone
else with historical data, we encounter a wide range of precision on
locality labels, from country to crossroad. Biota, like many other database
packages, provides fields for recording geographical coordinate accuracy.
We haven't yet come up with a good system for exploiting this feature. Some
of you out there must have already addressed this problem; does anyone have
suggestions about using accuracy fields and codes for reflecting different
levels of precision?

Thanks.


Aysha Prather
Insect Museum
University of Minnesota
prath003 at tc.umn.edu