Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
whisky-like smell), 4.” Samples are collected in small plastic bottles that are first filled
and then emptied into the stream to be sampled—thus, clearing any residue from last
week's ritual. The practical activities of data and sample collection are technical, but
not esoteric. By the fourth site, we visitors were invited to collect temperature samples
or hold the field sheet, filling in the called-out measurements. To take a temperature
reading, we had to wade into the middle of the water and hold out the thermometer
upstream of our bodies.
The routine is simple and quickly learned, but experience teaches one how to
manage outliers. If the smell of the field site is toxic (“methane,” “chemical,” “disgust-
ing”), the site may be evacuated immediately, leaving only that trace recorded on the
sheet. A single failed reading in the field sheet (what eventually becomes a blank entry
in the database) does not threaten the comparability of the data; it is only over time
that this failed reading becomes a concern.
During collection, participants are familiar with aligning a past set of data-capture
activities with the circumstances presented to them at each field site; it is a form of
standardization oriented to sustain alignment with past measurements. Observation and
documentation at each site are focused on detecting changes relevant to the commen-
surability of past versions of the ritual. Such changes are meaningful in that they simul-
taneously threaten the data set and promise new developments in knowledge.
Each step in the activities of collection is routine and standardized. In this sense, the
steps are mundane. Nevertheless, each activity is conducted with an orientation to
comparability and managing situational differences. Differences are judged meaningful
through activities of observation and made accountable through discussions between
scientists conducted in situ at each site.
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The database, the full archive of recordings
stretching back sixteen years, is not physically present in the ritual. It is even likely that
some of the technicians have never so much as glanced at the database. Yet, in the rou-
tinized activities of data collection, and in the perceptual orientation generated by the
empty boxes of the field sheet, a concern with comparability (with that very database)
is fostered.
Shifting Field Sites: Environment, Humans and Infrastructure over Time
For scientists, change in the field sites is the name of the game, but too great a change
and these sites cease to be relevant at all. Change is both the source of new knowledge
and an incipient threat to the comparability of longitudinal data. Determining whether
