The Biological Records Centre (BRC) was set up in 1964 by the Nature Conservancy (UK) at its recently opened Monks Wood Experimental Station near Huntingdon.
As part of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), BRC provides a focus for the collation, management, dissemination and interpretation of species observations (biological records).
[1] BRC helps the recording community to publish atlases,[7] datasets[8] and other online resources, providing information for research, policy and the conservation of wildlife.
To celebrate the BRC's 50th Anniversary, a special issue of the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society was published with 23 research and review articles covering the centre's work.
[12] LERCs have a complementary role to BRC and recording schemes as systems "for collating biological data from a wide range of sources (including organisations and individuals), for ensuring that data are properly validated and catalogued, and for providing access to them, thereby acting as a focus for biological information.