ࡱ> ')&7 bjbjUU 7|7| l       $ DD&Y&&&&&& lY^o0W &W &Good afternoon fellow Essex birders The last 18 months have seen some changes in the EBS perhaps most noticeably in the role that computers and the internet / e-mail have in the recording procedure. Last year over 36,000 records were received, processed and inputted onto on Excel spreadsheet by our team of recorders and extra data entry helpers. Almost 100% of these were hand written took a vast number of hours to unravel, decipher and enter. To minimise the amount of work that the recorders have to do (and increase the amount of time they get to spend in the field!) please could you utilize the attached Excel 97 spreadsheet with its six named columns.If youdo not haveMicrosoft Excel 97 then please feel free to use the following column headings on paper. SPECIES; LOCATION; NUMBER; DATE; COMMENTS; OBSERVER Even hand written contributions in this format will speed the inputting process up. For those with Excel the most important aspect of the file is getting the date entered correctly.It is imperative that the whole DATE column is formatted tothe date setting.Click Format, Cell,Number, Date and then choose the appearance. I normally go for 3-Jan as this is easier to read. You then simply input the date in the normal way i.e. 3/1/01 and it automatically converts to 3-Jan. If this is not done then all the dates will have to be re-entered to make sorting by date possible. Also of importance on the Excel sheet is theSPECIES column. Bird names must be entered in full using the names as used in the Bird Report. Please avoid using capital case for the whole bird name. This is again to facilitate merging with the master file and allow sorting. The actual order that you present the species in is not important. Please could observers submit their sightings on a regular basis, perhaps monthly or even quarterly. At the moment we receive most of your records in the first three months of the new year by which time we hope to be already at a stage where material is being produced for sub-editors. This puts a lot of pressure on the team when it could easily be avoided. Feel free to print out copies of the sheet for non-IT users or copy it onto a disk for those with PC's and no internet access. The latter can submit by disk rather than having to print it out. Please remember to check whether any unusual species that you find requires a description. If so please submit this to a Recorder by whatever method is appropriate. A list of species status can be found in the back of the latest bird report and a recording forminWord is also attached to this letter. I would be grateful if all BBRC adjudicated species are submitted via myself. For those of you who already follow this method of submission, many thanks and keep them coming, and for everyone else the Recording Team looks forward to receiving your 2001 records in the near future! Good birding and fingers crossed for the autumn. All the best Howard Vaughan Essex County Recorder on behalf of the Essex Birdwatching Society Recording Committee #&>A M P  ad0JOJQJ^J OJQJ^J OJQJ^J$&?A N P   bd$a$$a$. A!"#$% i0@0 Normal_HmH sH tH <A@< Default Paragraph Font"W@" Strong5\ $&?ANP  b d   0000000000000000000000000000000    ei?I 3333333Andrea and Howard*A:\Good afternoon fellow Essex birders.docAndrea4C:\Data\word\Good afternoon fellow Essex birders.doc@ ,,  @@UnknownG:Times New Roman5Symbol3& :ArialCFComic Sans MS"qhYQ\F $206 2#Good afternoon fellow Essex birdersAndrea and HowardAndreaZOh+'0 $0 L X dpx$Good afternoon fellow Essex birdersoodAndrea and HowardlondrndrNormalaAndreaa2drMicrosoft Word 9.0o@F#@OG@n} Z՜.+,0 hp  At Home6  $Good afternoon fellow Essex birders Title  !"#$%(Root Entry F lY*1TableWordDocumentSummaryInformation(DocumentSummaryInformation8CompObjjObjectPool lY lY  FMicrosoft Word Document MSWordDocWord.Document.89q