Voucher Archive

The Moth Voucher Archive holds the validated archive of digital voucher photographs of British moths. The Archive contains images from almost all Scottish vice counties and also the two vice counties that comprise Lancashire. This range will hopefully expand in the future.

The Voucher Archive is not supposed to be a high quality photo display of which there are many on the web. The archive provides somewhere to put photographic evidence that a species has been recorded at a local VC level. Additional (or composed) images including mines or genitalia may be required for some species, for example there is little point in having just an image of a Lesser Common Rustic. It may be appropriate to have multiple photos of the same species that are recorded only every few years or different areas of a large vice county. It can also hold unusual forms or aberrations of the types that collectors may have prized in the past. One of the key things is that a CMR’s successor or their successor when they see a record in the VC database has somewhere to go to satisfy themselves that an historical record is sound.

The Archive holds copies of the photos to provide 'public' access to the archive. The photographs remain copyright of the photographer.

Voucher Archive

This is the main selection page of the Archive and lists all of the images with their record details. The image thumbnail can be clicked to expand the image. The page is open access without the need to login.

There is a filter capabilily that enables vouchers for specific species, families, vice counties, 'regions' and recent additions to be listed. There is an option to add a region name to the URL, for example ?region=scotland, ?region=lancashire or a vice county number ?region=82, which will pre-set the VC/Region filter.

There are 100 images shown per page which can be scrolled through using the Next and Previous buttons at the bottom of each page. Records can show as 'CMR Verified' or not depending on who uploaded the voucher image.

Login

County Moth Recorders and others, by arrangement, can register to the Voucher Archive. This allows them to create and manage entries

There is a Register link on the login page which takes you through the process of entering name and email details and once the address is validated by an exchange of emails a password entered. Some email providers (notably hotmail, talk talk and btinternet) sometimes reject email from our hosting provider. If you don't get the email within a few minutes then please contact the administrator. The permission to create voucher records for a specific vice county is achieved through you emailing the administrator. If you are a CMR for one or more VCs then you should also let the administrator know that as you will have more management features available to you.

Create

Once logged in, Create and Manage menu links are displayed. The Create link presents a form that allows record details to be entered and your voucher photo to be browsed for. The species must be selected by ABH Code. The list of vice counties is restricted to those registered for.

The fields to be entered are:

Common name, Taxon & ABH Code

Three drop down lists are presented which contains species names or ABH Code. Only one of these needs to be selected.

Location

Any text string closely matching the site name in the NMRS database

Vice county number

Select from the VC(s) that you have privilege to upload images for

Record date

A text field so any format can be used; typically ddmmmyyyy e.g. 20Jul2019

Recorder

A text string containing the same name as in the NMRS database

Comment

It might be to note the form, that the image is of the progeny of a larva or egg, or the sex of the moth

Image file

Typically a jpg file with an image that has been cropped close to the size of the moth. The archive upload process will resize the image to 750 pixels. Although not absolutely required, it is a good idea to name the image files with details of the species, date, VC and location just in case there is a problem with the system.

Each voucher record has a CMR Verified indicator. If the upload is carried out by a CMR then it is assumed the the image has been verified. For other recorders the assumption is unverified. The CMR can update this indicator from their Manage form.

The email address of the person who uploaded the image is not available for images from the old dropbox-based Archive.

Manage

This function is only available to logged on users and is similar to the Voucher Archive Image Selection page, but without the Comment column to make space for the management columns. The records listed will be all those for the vice counties for which you are registered as the CMR or for images that you have personally uploaded. Voucher records can be individually edited or deleted. Records can show as 'CMR Verified' or not depending on who uploaded the voucher image. If you are a CMR then you can set and unset the verified status by checking on one or more checkboxes and clicking on the Update button at the top of the column.

Admin

This function is only available to those with the administrator role and is used to manage registered users. Access to create and manage vouchers is administered through adding or removing vice county authorisation. The access is either as a CMR or as a Recorder. Users can also be deleted.

Web links to voucher images

Images can be accessed directly by a url e.g. https://eastscotland-butterflies.org.uk/vouchers/images/72.006_Waved_Black_Bo'ness_84_27Jul2019_Mark_Cubitt.jpg. To get such a link for a voucher photo, right mouse click on the image and select 'Copy Link'.