Vladimir had another one of his invaluable: "one other idea not to forget"!!
If I understand, Vladimir suggested that we consider splitting the website's metadata in two tiers.
One tier or first set of menu items about LTSEs would total about a dozen key questions. They could be answered quickly and efficiently, even in passing;
the other set of menu items would be more lengthy, still not cumbersome, but more like the current metadata menu of items.
I believe Vladimir might more efficient progress in pulling the many Russian LTEs together into our LTSEs metadata base, should he be able to make use of an abbreviated set of a dozen questions.
Discussion anyone? Did I understand you properly Vladimir?
Dan Richter
Comments
An abbreviated List sounds useful
Vladimir has proposed the addition of a short LTSE form. This is a good idea and will be much less daunting.
This doesn't imply removing the longer list but supplementing it with a shorter form.
I think I can implement this but it will be up to others to decide on the minimum required information.
Technically it will need to be the same form with most of the fields hidden from view. In this way the person entering the data can just toggle between the short and long form. This means that when deciding what needs to be included in the short form it must be a subset of what is on the long form.
So add comments here with your proposed list.
Michael Hofmockel
"one other idea not to forget" -- the short questionaire
I'd propose these dozen questions in response to Vladimir's suggestion for an abbreviated questionaire:
Name
Latitude & Longitude
Nation & Continent
Data Holder
Website url
Year began
Landuse(s)
Ecoregion(s)
Geological parent material(s)
Soil order or classification(s)
Soil archive (Y or N)
Comments
Dan Richter
the short questionaire
Actually there are two different possibilities
Short list is one of them, but of course it restricts value of the info about each LTSE.
I counted data about experiments available in elecronic form from Russia and former USSR republics in our database and found out about 180 metadata at the moment. Seems more preferable to have someone in charge of conversion Russian metadata in English and also in the necessary form. Can we afford such position as a part-time job for several months in the frame of our project? Then I can ask one or another person from our institute, for example, to do it regularly. In that case more promising to prepare all the data available in a special format and send to Michael for addition in LTSE list, not doing it one by one from Moscow.
If it is not possible, then we need to orientate mostly on the first plan. I can do it when time permits and in that case presumably mostly orientate on our LTEs in EuroSOMNET meadatabase. Perhaps a short list then is more preferable
Vladimir Romanenkov