About Collection Events

The Collection Events module stores information about where, when, and by whom a sample was collected. The specificity of this information varies between samples. Old collection records may specify locality only to the level of a country or state, while newer records may include date, time, latitude, and longitude of sample collection.

Mineral Sciences classifies records in this module with two labels: Site and Collection Event.

A site is a record that contains only place names. The place names may be very broad (like a country or state) or quite specific (like a town, mine, or island name). Site records are typically suitable for re-use, especially for old records with limited geographic information. Sites can also in many cases be matched to place names in authoritative gazetteers (like Getty or GeoNames), which can provide useful context for records otherwise lacking specific detail.

A collection event includes specifics about when or by whom a sample was collected or very precise about where a sample was collected. Event records are typically too specific to re-use outside of a single collection or import and in many cases will be specific to a single sample.

Data standard

Standard records for terrestrial collection events must include the following data:

Continent
Country
State/province
One or more of the following:
- District/county
- Geomorphological location
- Island name
- Mining district
- Mine name
- Precise locality
- Quadrangle/map name
- Township
- Volcano name

Standard records for marine collection events must include the following data:

Ocean
Sea/Gulf
One or more of the following:
- Bay/sound
- Geomorphological location
- Precise locality

To exceed standards, a record should include coordinates as well as all of the data above. Coordinates may be provided by the collector or determined later by georeferencing the sample.

In addition to coordinates, georeferenced samples must also include the following information:

Source
Method
Name of geoereferencer
Date of georeference
Error radius
Geometry (point, polygon, or bounding box)
Datum
A description of how the sample was georeferenced. This description should be as detailed as possible to help end-users assess the reliability of coordinates.