Nicky Court (ALERC Director/Treasurer) posted the following on the ALERC Forum:

"Forthcoming ALERC conference to be held on Thursday the 29th April at a venue in central Birmingham. Please put the date in your diary!!

31 local records centres have now joined ALERC representing 123 staff! The venue will fit c100 so we hope for a good turnout. The booking fee will be lower for ALERC members!!

The theme of the conference will be about running an LRC business and sharing best practice. We intend having several short presentations and discussions in the morning around service level agreements/services provided, and on screening planning applications. This will then be followed by the ALERC AGM, and in the afternoon, a series of workshops on habitat inventories/IHS/data capture, accreditation, data validation, and supporting volunteer recorders.

We are looking for speakers and facilitators to volunteer themselves so if you feel you are being particularly innovative or involved in a particular project or have lots of experience to share then please can you put yourself forward and send me your details.  Otherwise I shall start picking on people! If anyone feels strongly about any other topic please also let me know as we may be able to run 5 workshops in the afternoon.

More details and flyer to send out shortly"

A substantial section on Accreditation has since been added and the Conference flyer and Booking Form can now be downloaded here . Please also register workshop choices at the Doodle

The venue is BVSC, The Centre for Voluntary Action,
138 Digbeth, Birmingham, B5 6DR Tel. 0121 6434343

For details of how to get there, go to http://www.bvsc.org/getting

Please check the ALERC Forum for any updates to Nicky's instructions. We hope to see you there!

ALERC formally launched itself upon Local Records Centres on 1st October 2009 when ALERC Directors contacted LRCs throughout the country asking them to sign up to their professional association. As from that date, therefore, ALERC is now a proper Association with fully signed up members.

This website can now gradually change and improve, I hope readers will be patient about this, it's rather a big leap from a basic presence on the internet aether to a site providing the kind of interactivity, resources and facilities which members will require.

If you do have any comments about this website, please login to the ALERC Forum at forum.lrcs.org.uk and make your comments about it there in the Communications section.

Arising out of the UK Recorder survey conducted on LRCs, Lynn Heeley, JNCC's Recorder Project Lead, has gathered together a group of interested parties for a meeting on Monday 10th November 2008. The purpose of the meeting is to examine the options and priorities for the future development of Recorder. The user group extends representation beyond JNCC's Steering Group by the inclusion of representatives from NFBR, ALERC and the wider Local Records Centre community. Outcomes will be published on the NBN Forum and this site in due course.

Findings from the JNCC survey indicate that 17 Local Records Centres use Recorder 6, and of them 12 use the Recorder Forum. A Survey conducted by Margaret Haggerty in January 2008 on behalf of NFBR listed 20 LRCs (45%) using Recorder 6, of which 14 were using the latest version.

A brief report from the meeting (D.Sumner NFBR & ALERC):

Some encouraging announcements were made by Steve Wilkinson (JNCC) about the proposed developments. A few enhancements and short-term fixes are scheduled to be carried out before the end of the year. These include improvements to the export sytems and associated addins and recording cards, a better user guide, a move of the Wiki (this is full of useful goodies for Recorder users - so keep an eye out for its resurrection) from the EIM site to make it more accessible and the hosting of the Recorder website will change from Dorset Software to JNCC. Following this are items already in the pipeline, including items like improvements in search speeds, a web-based logging of error messages and improvements in the way in which taxon determinations and verification works.

Feedback from the LRC survey gave rise to a discussion of priorities for future development. Encouragingly, JNCC have secured funding from a variety of partners for some reasonably advanced improvements.

• A verification tool - basically a separate application which could be used to check incoming datasets for a wide range of errors (ensuring grid reference falls within the correct Vice-County and doesn't fall into the sea etc., checking species against known distribution, geospatial checking of grid references against location names)
• Reporting system - enhancing the entire system, possibly replacing it with an entirely different module
• GIS ("improved links with other systems") - improvements in this system to allow better linking with other GIS initiatives (e.g. Humberside, Leicestershire). Natural England are currently directing a project to look at the range of GIS projects throughout the country - John Van Breda has the contract, so there's an interesting report due some time in the future from this work.
• Data import/export - general improvements in this area, JNCC are happy to explore all avenues necessary to make these systems work as well as they possibly can for the convenience of biologicalrecorders no matter which software they use.
• Species dictionaries - reconciling the various dictionaries, simplifying default lists and incorporating statuses (including better systems of reporting based on statuses)
• Communications

Glasgow Natural History Society, in association with RSPB, is holding a Conference entitled "Machair Conservation: Successes & Challenges" on Monday 8th December 2008 at the University of Glasgow.

The Conference is the culmination of a 3-year joint project on the conservation of the Great Yellow Bumblebee, partly funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. The conference will present the results of this project in the wider context of the Machair habitat as a whole.

The Machair is a beautiful flower-rich grassland unique to the remote coastland of western Scotland and northern Ireland and is one of the rarest habitats in Europe. It supports several rare or endangered species of plants and wildlife, making it of international importance. It is highly complex in terms of its origin, development, ecology, variation and management, which makes it very vulnerable to damage and deterioration from changes in land use or management.

This Conference will focus on this interesting habitat, highlighting the most up to date research into its management and the wildlife it supports. There will be opportunity to explore the future prospects for this wonderful resource in light of developments in the way land management such as crofting and farming is carried out and supported.

A Registration Form is available at www.gnhs.org.uk/machair_prog.html

LRC Conference and inaugural meeting of the Association of Local Environmental Records Centres.

To be held on Friday 28th November 2008 (10:00 to 4:30) in Bristol Council House, College Green, Bristol, BS1 5TR

Download details of the conference and an application form:

• in MSWord
• and please try our distributed pdf form - just fill in the yellow sections and hit the "Submit" button (Adobe 8 required as minimum)

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Set an onus on Local Authorities to financially support a Local Biodiversity Records Centre (LRC) in their area to provide a central point for the collation and dissemination of biological/biodiversity information (species and habitats) ...

Stephen James McWilliam (of Cheshire's rECOrd) plus 2455 signatories

See more at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/LRC-Funding/