BioBase is a simple to use yet powerful Windows based computer package for taxon specialised biological recording. BioBase has been adopted as the standard for county recorders by the Mammal Society, the Bat Conservation Trust, the British Dragonfly Society and the British Lichen Society.
BioBase is approved and in use by BSBI fully meeting their Data Transfer Standard, by the Bees Wasps and Ants Recording Scheme (BWARS) and the Herp Groups of Great Britain and Ireland.
Versions are also released for Bryophyte and Beetle recording. A general version is available for users to configure with their own species checklist(s), stage, abundance, habitat, status and other reference data.
Records used for reports and distribution mapping may be limited by date range and can be marked as confidential to be excluded from reports, maps and exports.
Codes (e.g. BRC codes) are used for species and may be used for people, but Recorder codes are also stored and these are used for export to Recorder.
Recorder codes are used for other information (e.g. habitat, abundance and site status) so that the interchange of data with a Recorder-based county Local Records Centre is simplified.
As well as a stand-alone system for local use, BioBase can thus also be used as a data capture system to a local Recorder centre.
Data entry is performed largely by mouse action from drop-down lists with minimal use of the keyboard.
Species can be entered by selection from a checklist on common or scientific name or by species code.
Checks are made on the validity of numeric, date and grid reference formats.
Dates can be entered as a full date, as month and year, or just a year, as a year range, before a year and after a year.
Grid references can be entered in alpha-numeric form (SU987654) or numeric form (41/987654) with a precision between 10Km (2-digit) and 10m (8-digit). Tetrad form (SU96X), Irish form (J543210) and UTM (30UEC123456) are also accepted.
Records may be related to a defined Site or to a Location which is unrelated to a Site. If repeated visits to a location are made, it is recommended that a Site be defined after which Record Card entry is greatly simplified and association with other records for the site is made possible.
BioBase is supplied with full installation and user documentation and with a Tour (simple tutorial) working with a test database which can be used to gain familiarity with BioBase without impacting the live database.
BioBase is an application under the run-time version of the MS Access database which is supplied with the package.
If the user has a developer version of Access 2, Access 7, Access 97 or Access 2000 then an open system interface in BioBase can be used to attach to the BioBase data tables so that any required queries can be run, reports generated and analysis performed on the data.
Since the underlying database is MS Access, many other programs such as spreadsheets, word processors, DTP, GIS etc can readily attach and use the data.
BioBase is available at an end user price of £75 plus VAT. Organisations can benefit from a 20% discount (details on application) and can then pass the package on to their users at the discounted price of £60, or with with a further subsidy at their discretion.
BioBase was developed by Mike Thurner of Thurner Automation.
The future supply, support and development of BioBase is in the process of being transferred to Adit Limited
After a period of consultation with existing users, Adit hope to bring BioBase up to date with current technology, and respond to any requests for improvements, and additional features.
Adit produce a number of software packages used in wildlife recording and mapping, and you can find out more about these by following this link
AditSite
We hope to contact all existing users of BioBase shortly*, but in the meantime existing and prospective users are welcome to contact us using the following link
Request further information
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