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Lets look at a few fields in the main Collection Object (CO) Form.

When a data table is embedded in the main collection object form, it is called a subform. Different subforms link to the main Collection Object form in a variety of ways. They also can link to more than one Collection Object, which saves you from having to type the same information over and over. There's a draw back, though.

Sometimes,  when you edit    Image Addeda subform, you may be changing information for lots of specimens instead of just the one you are working with. ALWAYS be wary when editing existing records!

In red, we see a field for the Taxon information.

  • When you go to enter the taxon of a specimen, you can type the first few letters of the Genus (or Class, Order, Family) and hit the 'tab' key, a window will pop up asking you to select from a list which taxon name you want to use.
    • It does this by launching a sort of mini-query from the Collection Object form to the Taxon Table, which holds all our taxon data.
  • You can see the Taxon table records more than just taxonomy- name of the person who first published the name, date published, and reference are some of the other fields in this table. 

For the Green field, we have The Green subform is the Collecting Info (CI) . This field takes a lot of information from at least 3 tables and merges it into a single line.

  • First, it
reached
  • reaches out to the Collecting Info table. This table has many fields, but only the Field Number is displayed off the main CO form.
  • Next, it reaches into the Locality table. Here it takes the Locality name.
    • Deeper in the Locality form are the Locality details, from which the CI field takes the Geography information and any georeference data.
  • All these parts are combined in one line with a comma separating segments of information. 

The blue table is the Inventory and preparations subform. The subform is 'Inventory and Preparations', and it subform Inventory.

  • It reaches out to the Storage Table much in the same way as the Taxon field reaches out to the Taxon Table.
  • There are many fields to the inventory data, and some of them reach out to more tables (like the Agent table)
.It's because of all this 'reaching out' that we must be very careful when editing records. Some of the 'reaching out' actions can link, for example, a single locality to many specimens. This is great because we get lots of specimens from the same locality. But if one specimen from locality B got lumped in with the guys from locality A, and you go to edit the locality information....well, you've edited the information for every Collection Object A locality and changed it to a B! Now, if instead of editing the locality, if you just clear the information out of the line and make a whole new Locality for B, you are just editing the single record
  • .
There's much more on this is the editing records segment, and as always, the collections staff is here to help.