Sarah Whild’s career has been spent teaching biological recording as a university lecturer, although by nature she is a botanist and has been an ecological consultant. Now retired, she works closely with the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland on field skills and is a trustee of the National Forum for Biological Recording.

• 1. An Introduction to Biological Recording What is biological recording? Headline stories Some biological recording history What makes a good biological recorder? What makes a good biological record?2. Planning Planning your recording or survey Legislation Monitoring for change and the importance of biological recording3. Recording Taxonomy for biological recording Where am I? Site recording Recording habitats and communities Species recording methods Skill levels and scope Absent records… a record of absence? Bias in recording Errors in recording Identification strategies and skill building4. Records in context Computers in biological recording Historical records Status and rarity Verifying, validating and refereeing The ‘who’ – and why it is so important5. Analysis Approaches to records analysis Analysis of species records Analysing site, sample or grid square lists Indicator species6. Reporting A story goes with it: writing reports Who’s who? Record flow in the biological recording community More data or better data? Or both? Records confidentiality Who owns records? Legislation and record availability7. Acting – Where Next? Some case studies on action Future recording – present recording?References Index

This book should be used by students, conservation professionals and academics alike. By doing so, the bar would be raised on the questions asked, the methods used, the data collected and curated, and the extent to which conclusions can be drawn. It is a book that I’ll refer to, again and again.