An Australian collector's authority file, 1973-2020

Biodiversity databases contain omissions and errors, including those resulting from data entry mistakes and from the use of outdated or incorrect data sources. Some of these omissions and errors can be minimised by the use of authority files, such as expert-compiled taxonomic name databases. However, there are few publicly available authority files for collecting events, and the "where", "when" and "by whom" of specimen data are typically entered into biodiversity databases separately and directly, item by item from specimen labels.

Here I describe a publicly available compilation of 3829 of my own collecting events over a 48-year period in Australia. Each record contains a unique combination of date, georeferenced location and location notes.