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1. A Pocket Checklist of The Birds of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. Richard Gregory-Smith. Malaysian Nature Society 1996. This book was used mainly to enter the common and scientific names only.
2. A Field Guide to the Birds of West Malaysia and Singapore. Allen Jeyarajasingam and Alan Pearson. Oxford University Press 1999. This book was used to counter check errors, to add local names and other data such as size, migratory status etc
3. A Field Guide to the Birds of South-East Asia. Craig Robson. New Holland Publishers 2000. This book was used when data is not available in Allen J's book or as a comparison of naming conventions. Data for some species not found in Allen J's book are taken from this guide.

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Since some of the data are entered from popup lists, you must ensure that the values you are going to enter are already in the appropriate tables before attempting to add sighting records. For example, for Trip Name you must first go to the Trips form to define that particular Trip (for once only). The same principle applies to the Location and Birder Name.

If you cannot find the common name of a species from the popup list, it may be that you are using a different common name from that used in this database. Check the naming variations file for a possible clue. Do not create a new profile for the species to avoid duplication of species entries under different names.

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Notes on the Tables
Table: Species. Stores information about each species. The speciesname and scientificname are fields requiring unique contents, i.e. no duplication of value will be allowed. The speciesname is also very important as it is used to link to the Sightings table.
Table: Family. Store information about family of birds.
Table: Migration. Store popup values about migratory status.
Table: Location: Store information about birding location/destinations. Linked to the Sightings table by the 'Location' field. Please note that 'Location' field refers to a more specific place such as 'Fraser Hill, rubbish dump area' whereas 'BirdingArea' field refers to a more general area such as 'Fraser Hill'. Currently, reports mostly makes use of the latter field only.
Table: Birders. Store information about birders. Linked to the Sightings table by the 'Birdername' field.
Table: Trips. Store information about birding trips. Linked to the Sightings table by the 'Tripname' field.
Table: Sightings. This is the table storing the most important data - information about each bird sighting. Each species sighted in a particular trip is stored as one record. The Report2BCC a logic field which allows tagging of records to be included in sightings report to BCC. Records not tagged by this field (i.e. checked with a tick) will not
be included in the reports. However, you can still customize filtering (e.g. disable the Report2BCC tag) by modifying the
corresponding query to suit your needs. The SeeSightingsNote is another logic field used to indicate that there is important information in the SightingsNotes field. If the SeeSightingsNote is checked, some of the reports will place an asterisk (*) against the record. The TagField is a spare logic field not used for any purpose. You may want to use it to randomly tag records.
Table: SightingsArchive. This is a mirror table to Sightings. If you have too many sightings records and want to keep the Sightings table small, you can transfer records by cutting records from the 'Sightings' table and pasting it into the 'SightingsArchive'. Records in the archives will not be available for inclusion in any of the reports unless you create new reports specifically to retrieve them. Cutting off records and pasting them back will change the SightingsID which is automatically allotted by Access. This means functions which depend on the Sightings ID such as the Video table will become invalid as it is linked using the SightingsID.
Table: Videos. This table stores videos of birds (only) by taking sightings data from the sightings table and
link them to relevant fields such as video quality, sound quality and video comments etc. Although primarily for cataloging
videos, it can also be used to catalog other recorded media such as photos. Forms and reports related to the video table had
been added accordingly. The SightingsSimpleForm had been modified to allow integration of data entry in this table (videos
table) so that sightings data and video cataloging can be done more efficiently. To add records to the video table,
corresponding sightings data *have* to be added before hand. Be sure to 'refresh' the sightings form before opening the video
form to make the newly added sightings data available.
Table: Videoquality. This defines the criteria used to grade the video quality.
Table: Soundquality. This defines criteria used to grade t he sound quality.
Table: Non-AvianVideos. This table is used to catalog videos which are not linked to the sightings table.
Animals, birding scenes etc can be stored here. This table is not linked to any other table.
Table: Habitat. This hold information on the preferred habitat of each species. The habitat is chosen based
on what I perceived as the most preferred habitat of the species. As I am not an experienced birder and have relatively less
experience in birding, you may want to redefine the habitat for each species based on what you think is the best. Use the
Species form to change the habitat.

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Some of the queries will prompt you for values to be used for filtering the tables. If the value requested is a keyword (character field), you may type in a complete word, part of a word or a phrase depending on how specific you want your filtering to be. If you type nothing and press enter, it is assumed you want to ignore filtering for the particular field. However, if you are prompted to enter a date, you must enter a valid date for the queries to work.

The SightingsQueryForExport is a query created specifically to select records to be pasted onto the clipboard in the export procedure.

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1. This may sound naive but it is a practical problem: if you have trouble reading the computer screen at 800x600 resolution, change the resolution to 640x480 while entering data in the forms. This can prevent a lot of errors and time wasted in finding and correcting them later on. I am speaking from experience - I typed many double spaces in between words and ended up in a mess at one time because some of these errors occurred in critical fields (involved in relationships). Correcting these errors is a time consuming effort.
2. You can add sightings records _almost_ exclusively with keyboard alone and circumvent the need to use your mouse to navigate between the fields. Pressing the TAB key on the keyboard (usually just above the CAPS LOCK key) will move the cursor to the next field. Unlike the ENTER key, the TAB key always move the cursor to the next field. In memo fields, the ENTER key will add a hard return/new line instead of moving to the next field. Pressing the Shift-TAB key will move back to the previous field for you to correct mistakes.
3. Most of the sightings data are added by selecting values from popup lists (see help on Combo boxes in Access). While the cursor is in a particular field with popup list, type the first character (do not worry about capitation in the sightings form but use correct capitation in other forms) of the value you are going to enter and the popup list will show you the first matching value available. If that is the value you want to enter, pressing the TAB key again will complete the data entry AND move the cursor to the next field. If that is not the exact value, typing the second, third or more characters etc will quickly move you to more specific values. If this still fails, you can still use the mouse to scroll down or up the list to find your desired value to be entered.
4. Before you add any new records to the birders, trips or birding location forms, it is advisable to use the search function to check if a similar record already exists. This can avoid duplication of records. Simple extra efforts like these can save a lot of confusion later on.
5. Use short-cut keys such as Ctrl-' whenever possible. When you add new records to the sightings table, the fields need to be typed in include date (of sighting), species name, tripname, location, birder name and date computerised. You will notice that among all these fields, only the species name differs from one record to another. For other fields, you need to enter the correct value only once. After that, use the value of the previous (just added) record to put into subsequent records with the short-cut key: Ctrl-apostrophe (Ctrl-'). Pressing these two keys simultaneously will put the value of the previous record into the existing record. There are probably many other short-cut methods to enter data. Take the trouble to check the HELP menu of Access and you may be able to find other fast ways of doing things in Access.
6. Work with subsets of the records. It is easier to work with subsets of the records by applying a filter while in a form or table. For example, if you are typing in sightings for a certain trip called 'Fraser Hill Feb 2001 Birding Trip' you can click Records > Filter by form > click tripname in the form and select the filter value. Then click 'Filter' > Apply Filter/Sort. You will then be working only on all records in this trip. You can switch between form view and datasheet view to find your records easily while a filter is in effect. Also, sorting the sightings by SightingsID (using the 'Advance Filter/Sort') and then viewing in datasheet view will provide you with a list of records in the order that was entered into the computer. This can then be compared or matched with the hard copy of birding notes to check for errors, omissions or duplications.
7. You can also filter off sightings records before a certain date. In the criteria for the date field in advanced filter or filter by form option, entering (without the quotes) ">#20/01/01#" will exlude all sightings before 20 January 2001. This makes finding a certain record much easier. You can also use the equal (=) or less than (<) symbols to alter the date filtering options.
8. If you had modified any forms, reports etc or deleted any records, it is advisable to optimize file size by compacting the database. This is done from the Tools menu > Database Utilities > Repair Database. Then go through the same menu and do Compact Database. This can make your database smaller and save a fair amount of disk space..
9. This database allows you to generate 'Lifers' list. You must enter your 'lifers' in the sightings form but I am sure many veteran birders had long forgotten the date, trip or location about their 'first time'. This situation can be solved by using a general trip name such as 'Trips before millenium' etc. The location can be something like "Unspecified/Forgotten". The date field can be left empty to indicate a date from the 'dinasour' period. It is suggested that other tha the above situations, trip name used should be easy to remember or find. I usually use a combination of the destination and date to form trip names, e.g. 'Kuala Gula Birding Apr 2000' is a meaningful name which is self explanatory.
10. Some sightings may be made by more than one birders. In this case, it may be better to define a group of birders such as "Selangor Branch Bird Group" instead of a specific person. This can avoid duplication of sightings records by more than one birders from this group.
11. The following characters have special meaning in Access so that you should avoid using them in any field if possible: # [ ] ( ) ' "
12. If you find that in your reports, there are some bird sightings with invalid or empty family name or other fields, it is likely that the bird species name in the sightings table had been entered wrongly. Find that record by noting the sightingsID or details of other fields. Correct the spelling carefully by selecting the name from the pop-up list. See also section on How to correct data which are involved in integrity checks.
13. Lastly, this can never be overemphasized - backup your data regularly. It is prudent practice to backup data especially after you had just entered many records. You may need to do this more than once in a day to protect your data from being damaged or corrupted by power failure and software conflicts etc. Store an extra copy of the database in a different folder or preferably on a different disk. I burn the data regularly onto CDs so that there is no danger of overwriting old data. It is also advisable that before you delete any records, queries, forms or reports you should burn a copy of the database into CD. You will never know whether you will need those deleted objects in the future.

How to correct data which are involved in integrity checks?
If you had accidentally mis-spelled data for the species name, trip name, location or birder name, and then linked one of these to the corresponding sightings table, you cannot correct the errors in these fields directly. Access will report violation of relationship integrity and prevent you from saving the corrected records. To correct errors in these fields, you must first delete all records in the sightings table with the same field values. Then correct the error and add back new records in the sightings table with the corrected value.

Alternatively, create a new record with the correct value in the species, trips, location or birder tables and then change all appropriate records in the sightings table to this value. You can use filters (containing the mis-spelled words) to isolate all these records (see working with subsets of records in Tips and Tricks) so that thery are more easy to work with. After the mis-spelled record is no longer linked to any record in the sightings table you can delete it.

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1. I am a relatively new user of Access and do not know how to add modules/macros. Thus the database is not as user-friendly as I would like it to be and you would need to have some knowledge of Access to use it.
2. The use of many popup lists aids in accurate data entry but this means that the database may not be compatible with PalmPilot (using Palm OS) which is a popular handheld device allowing data entry in the field. I do not own a PalmPilot or other handheld computers and has no knowledge of Windows CE (the operating system for the latter gadgets). So the database had been designed without taking into account of compatibility with Palm OS or Windows CE. I can only hope that it is compatible and some days in the future, you can actually enter sightings data in the field and later sync the database with your desktop computer or notebook.
3. If multiple birders are entering sightings into the same database, this database has no way of preventing multiple entries of the same sighting under different or same birder names.
4. The relationships between tables were designed with enforcement of 'referential integrety'. This means that Access will check to ensure correct spelling of data involved in relationships. Mis-spelled values will be rejected and this may seem to slow down or prevent data entry altogether. But it is a small price to pay for error-free data entry. This also means that once data had been entered into some fields (e.g. TripName, BirderName and Location) they should not be changed or deleted. The sightings form is an exception. You can delete a record in sightings without disrupting the integrety of the relationships.
5. I realise that the three books I referred to sometimes have different convention in bird names. Some birds included in one book may not be included in another as present in Malaysia but these species had been included in the database as long as they are listed in any one of the three books. See naming variation for a list of birds with variable names.

1. I shall be entering bird lists from other areas as they become available to me.
2. I may decide to add a table or modify the species table to enable cataloging recordings of bird videos or pictures.
3. You may notice that there are some extra/unused fields in some tables. These are for potential enhancements in the future such as multiuser data entry. If there is anyone interested in starting a bird sighting registration on the web in future, these field will be used.

I would like to thank the owners/compilers of the bird lists which I had computerized into the database. If you feel your list should not be put in, please contact me so that I can remove the records.

Many thanks.

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