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► ERIC North East

The Environmental Records Information Centre (ERIC) North East is based within the Great North Museum: Hancock. The records centre’s main role is to develop and manage a database of wildlife records for the North East, as well as encouraging people to take an interest in and record the wildlife in the region.

The database is used to enable those working in wildlife conservation and the voluntary recording community to be more informed when they make decisions about the environment.

How you can help us………..

Data collated by ERIC comes from a wide range of organisations in a number of different formats and is often difficult to access. Species surveys will often arrive in paper format, and this information must be transferred into an electronic format in order to be added to the database.

We need volunteers to help us do this!

Volunteers can spend as much or as little time as they like transcribing paper based records into a simple computer system, whether one hour a month or ten hours a week - whatever you can spare!

This is a hugely important task for ERIC North East as it means existing wildlife information will be converted into a form which can be used much more easily in planning for the future of the natural environment.

Volunteers do not require any prior knowledge of species or habitats.

How we can help you…………..

This task will help volunteers develop their IT skills as well as their species knowledge. It also helps provide an insight into the wildlife that can be found in the North East region.

As part of the data input training, volunteers will be trained to use software such as Recorder and ArcGIS which are used to house our species database.

All of these aspects of the role will be particularly useful and relevant for anyone hoping to gain employment in the environmental field.

We also have unlimited tea and biscuits!