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Re: Database
Jay Moylan wrote:
>> I would be interested in such a program. I might
>> even make the effort to use it regularly despite my
>> procrastinative proclivities! It sounds like a winner.
>> Doing all this on paper just hasn't been worth the
>> trouble to me. A quick entry on the computer sounds
>> much more manageable.
We all have those tendencies, and an effectively designed fish-room system or a species maintenance status system (two different things, with some degree of overlap) has to take those human factors in consideration. In the absence of strong, enforceable, top-down decree (never present in volunteer efforts), data collection systems ALWAYS fail if the designers don't realize that the front-line payees (the people who pay the daily cost by expending time and effort to collect and input the data) have to PERSONALLY receive benefits equal to or greater than the price of admission.
I suspect most of us keep very spotty paper records.
The reality is that most of us would do even WORSE with computer-ized records .. since unless you have a computer in the fish-room/s, you're taking notes in the fishroom, and then re-writing (typing) them later into the computer in some other location.... i.e., taking the work we already find too onerous to do regularly, and having to do it twice. This is not the roadmap to a better solution. The PalmPilot might be, although free-text notes of more than a sentence or two get tedious to enter. My next computer will probably be a portable, precisely so that I can have it conveniently on hand in the fishroom when needed.
This stuff only works* if the operational benefit received is greater than the cost. And I measure "cost" here almost entirely in terms of time. Something to think about when contemplating a computer system for fish-room management or any other purpose ... Is this computer system/application working for me, or am I working for it? The latter answer suggests that entropy & disuse will quickly set in.
* for most hobbyists, professional scientists are different, since they're trained to know that disciplined detailed documentation is the primary first-level output of their work
$0.05
Doug Dame
Interlachen FL
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head, voice recognition & wireless comm.,
technology research division
fish-rooms of interlachen, inc.
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(an entirely fishtitious organization)
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