Diagrammatic representation of the workflow for retrieval of data from the original reference files (A). These files were separated into two parts for editing influenced by the 1980s organisation of the data: (i) information on the sites at which data were collected (B), and (ii) the species lists, which were updated through the Biodiversity Information Explorer, BIE (http://bie.ala.org.au/ws) (C). Once these components were updated, they were re-assembled using DarwinCore standards (D) to enable delivery through a data portal (in this case the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity, KNB (https://knb.ecoinformatics.org). Ecological Metadata Language (EML) was used to describe the dataset.