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values?</title></head><body>
<div>Hi Lynn & John,</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Personally, I don't think that combined date fields are adequate,
particularly for retrospective data capture. We have far too
many insect labels with partial dates (tiny labels, tiny print, no
room), which really mess up (probably also platform dependent
screwups) when you try to enter the data as a date without one of the
pieces. We've found all permutations--year only, month and year,
month and day, well, maybe not day and year...but that's enough of a
variety that we have all the fields individually broken out to
accomodate this and then account for missing data in a calculated
"pseudo" date by making assumptions depending on which piece
may be missing. It also gives you greater flexibility and
assuredness that you have the day and the month able to be put in the
order desired or show the date in different formats such as 6.ix.1956,
where the day and the month could easily be confused.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Cheers!</div>
<div>Gail</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Hi Lynn,</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> </blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>XML Schema, in its dateTime type,
supports a subset of the ISO 8601 datetime standard. The proposal for
DwC2 currently recommends the concepts EarliestDateCollected and
LatestDateCollected, both as dateTime types, to capture bounded or
unbounded date/time combinations of arbitrary specificity. These
should be sufficient except where lists of dates or other multiple
date ranges are required for a single record - unless I'm missing
something, in which case I'd like to know.</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> </blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Cheers,</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> </blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>John<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>On 2/23/06,<b> Lynn Kutner</b> <<a
href="mailto:Lynn_Kutner@natureserve.org">Lynn_Kutner@natureserve.org</a
>> wrote:<br>
<blockquote><font face="Arial" size="-1">Hi -</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial" size="-1">I'm working with a suite of
date attributes that can include a combination of precise dates,
imprecise dates, and ranges of dates (and the same types of time
values). We'd like to follow existing standards. If this sort of date
/ time standard exists, I'd appreciate leads to the appropriate
resources.</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial" size="-1">Thank you for your help
-</font><br>
<font face="Arial" size="-1">Lynn</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><br></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Comic Sans MS" size="-1">Lynn
Kutner</font><br>
<font face="Comic Sans MS" size="-1" color="#808080"><i>Data
Management Coordinator</i></font><br>
<font face="Comic Sans MS" size="-1"
color="#808080"><i>NatureServe</i></font><br>
<font face="Comic Sans MS" size="-1"
color="#808080">Email: </font> <a
href="mailto:lynn_kutner@natureserve.org"><font face="Comic Sans MS"
size="-1" color="#808080">lynn_kutner@natureserve.org</font></a><br>
<font face="Comic Sans MS" size="-1" color="#808080">Phone:
(303) 541-0360</font><br>
<font face="Comic Sans MS" size="-1"
color="#0000FF"><u>www.natureserve.org</u></font></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div>======================<br>
Gail E. Kampmeier<br>
Sr. Research Entomologist<br>
Illinois Natural History Survey<br>
Box 5 NSRC, 1101 W. Peabody Dr.<br>
Urbana, IL 61801<br>
http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/~gkamp<br>
======================</div>
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