President's Page
Peter Harvey 32 Lodge Lane, Grays, Essex RM16 2YP. Tel: (01375) 371571.
Email: grays@peterharvey.freeserve.co.uk
Slow progress continues on a new centre for the Club at Wat Tyler Country Park. We
will keep you informed as definite news becomes available.
Good progress is being made with the Club's HLF funded digitisation project, with the
majority of Essex Naturalist journals now digitised. Once digitisation of the Club's
books, bulletins and journals is nearing completion, then work will begin in earnest
on the project website for this vast resource of historical and modern county information.
Once again I would request help from members in this process, both in volunteering to
be involved in providing feedback on the project website as it is developed, but also
in the production of abstracts and the computerisation of the Passmore Edwards
Museum library card catalogue and handwritten inventory of the Club's collections.
Members of the Club can now do abstracts on-line if they are registered on our website,
from a link "My Archive Abstracts" in the "My stuff page. Any member can reserve
one or more digitised Essex Naturalist volumes, access the pdf files of the papers in
these volumes and submit abstracts to a database for future use in the project. Please help!
A new website development provided for us by Mark Yeates at Teknica Ltd is a boundary
digitiser www.essexfieldclub.org.uk/portal/p/Boundarv+Digitizer/ which enables
logged-on users to draw a line or polygon (such as a site boundary) on a google map
background and save these to a database for use elsewhere on the website, for example
in site account pages. We hope to extend this to allow users to add markers providing
information e.g. on the location of car parking, access points, target notes (including
image uploads) etc. Ordnance Survey has also released a beta version of OS OpenSpace
API http://openspace.ordnanccsurvey.co.uk/openspace/, which is free to access for
applications publicly accessible on the internet. OS OpenSpace is particularly aimed
at community based innovation and use by charities, non-profit making organisations,
volunteer led groups and other social and community groups. The Club will be
investigating this new facility with the aim of incorporating its Ordnance Survey map
functionality into our website.
OPAL (Open Air Laboratories) is a Lottery-funded £11.7 million initiative that will
encourage people to discover, enjoy and protect their local environments, which aims
to inspire the next generation of nature-lovers in the UK. It comprises a partnership of
the Natural History Museum, Field Studies Council, National Biodiversity Network,
Met Office, Royal Parks and 10 universities across England. There is an OPAL Research
Project on Support for Natural History Societies and Recording Schemes, and the
Club first participated in a questionnaire in January this year. At the end of May
OPAL's annual funding call was launched, with grants of £500-£2000 available to
support the work of society or recording schemes. The deadline for applications was
31st July 2009, so there was not much time for discussion and planning, but at our
2 Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 60, September 2009