Field Book Project

Field Notes from a Battle Against Extinction

By Sonoe Nakasone, Field Book Project

 

As a resident of DC since 2003, I’m familiar with this city’s love affair with Giant Pandas. What I didn’t know until recently is that this Panda obsession is largely thanks to revolutionary research on Panda biology and reproduction conducted by Dr. Devra Kleiman, the National Zoological Park (NZP) conservation zoologist who died last year. Embarrassingly, I didn’t recognize the name Devra Kleiman when archivist Jennifer Wright, author of this 2010 article about Kleiman’s personal papers (Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 11-124), alerted me to Kleiman’s field books.

Most of Kleiman’s field notes focus on golden lion tamarins (GLT) and other tamarins, documenting every aspect of their lives, especially reproduction. Kleiman and her colleagues hoped to reverse the tamarins’ spiraling decent towards extinction. It was estimated fewer than 200 GLT existed when she began her mission*.

The major difference between Kleiman’s field notes and most other field notes I’ve cataloged is Kleiman didn’t really “collect specimens”. Rather, her notes document animal behavior, activities, diet, as well as external factors affecting the livelihood of tamarins. Kleiman and her team did collect blood, skin, and fur samples, and they did capture tamarins to breed in captivity before reintroducing them into the wild, yet the fundamental purpose and method of research was distinct from traditional natural history field work.

Devra Kleiman and colleague conducting playback study.

I don’t pretend to understand the techniques used to research Tamarins, but I noticed three common protocols described throughout Kleiman’s field notes: scans, focals, and playbacks. Scans and focals are systematic observations. Scans focus on all member of a group of animals; focals focus on an individual animal. Both adhere to specific lengths of time and seek specific information about behavior and activities. Playbacks involved projecting recordings of various animal vocalizations in the field. During these experiments, animal responses, if any, were documented and differences between male and female responses noted.

Sometimes field notes about tamarin behavior are anecdotal. One entry describes Vera, a GLT who hunts a frog by shaking and tugging at roots until she pulls it out of the ground. Another describes a step-by-step tango between an aggressive GLT, Rita, and a nervous Kleiman as each advances and retreats from the other by turns.

Although our project focuses on biological data, it was impossible to ignore notes about meetings, events, and activities relating to Kleiman’s conservation program that were interspersed between field notes. These notes provided interesting insight into the challenges Kleiman and her colleagues faced—challenges like apathy and politics. On October 25, 1991, Kleiman remembers a particularly difficult visit to a corporation: “the veep [VP] we meet is very obnoxious—suggesting that people are burned out [with] ecology (mentions a t-shirt entitled “I don’t give a s--- about the GLT)”. On March 16, 1990, Kleiman notes the effects of economic instability in Brazil on the project: “they are freezing all interest-bearing overnight accounts [...]. Cecilia [Kleiman’s colleague] had $6000 WWF grant in an overnight account. It increased by $1000 interest, but now she can’t touch it.”

Despite apathy, political instability, and other issues like poaching and deforestation, Kleiman was successful at shedding light on the issue of golden lion tamarins and helping to increase the GLT population by 800%. There are currently an estimated 1,600 wild GLT in Brazil*.

Kleiman’s field books are a refreshing and exhilarating alternative to many of her predecessor’s field books because she was a pioneer in the burgeoning field of conservation biology. Her notes reflect not only the advancement of human knowledge, but also the application of that knowledge to ensure the livelihood of species struggling for survival.

Learn about Kleiman’s electronic records here

* National Zoological Park. http://nationalzoo.si.edu/SCBI/EndangeredSpecies/GLTProgram/default.cfm (accessed August 11, 2011)

Nicollet Project

By Charles Umbanhowar

What would it be like to wander North America before (or shortly after) the arrival of European explorers and settlers? What did the landscape look like?  Who were the people already living here and how did they interact with their world?  These questions have occupied the time of a variety of thinkers and writers ranging from Aldo Leopold to more recently Charles Mann in his book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.  And yet other writers have wondered about our wonderings about past landscapes.

Imagining past landscapes is especially difficult in the Upper Midwest where plow agriculture dominates.   The remnants of past landscapes are small and have been heavily changed over the past 150 years, and a landscape without roads and farms built on the grid of the Public Land Survey seems unimaginable.  The 1836-1839 expedition notebooks of Joseph. N. Nicollet give us glimpse of the unimaginable, and perhaps this is why Nicollet and his work have been a subject of fervent interest over the past 100 years.

Figure 1. Hydrographical map of Upper Midwest by J.N. Nicollet (1843).

Nicollet was a French scientist, formally trained as an astronomer, and he travelled extensively in the Midwest as he worked to collect the data need for his Hydrographical Map  (Figure 1). His story has been wonderfully recounted by Martha Bray in her book The Journals of Joseph N. Nicollet.  Bray and her husband also published several collections of excerpts from the Nicollet which have probably done more than anything else to maintain and generate interest in the expeditions and the landscape of Minnesota and the Dakotas.  It was these excerpts that got me interested in Nicollet more than 25 years ago while still a student.

Because excerpts are excerpts and cannot give a full sense of a work, I, two colleagues, and many students at St. Olaf (with funding from NCUR and the Lancy Foundation) have been working to make available the complete field notebooks and maps and other records generated by the Nicollet expeditions, with particular focus on the years 1838 and 1839 when Nicollet travelled through the prairies of southern Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas (Figure 2, Figure 3). The materials we worked with are archived in Washington DC at a variety of locations.  The 1838 journal of Nicollet and many of his map, astronomical journals , and even a mail pouch are housed at the Library of Congress in the Manuscripts Division.  Notebooks for the 1839 expedition up the Missouri River and on to Devil’s Lake, North Dakota are at the National Archives.  And finally, an 1838 Field Botanical Notebook by the expedition’s botanist Charles Geyer is housed in the Smithsonian’s archives. 

Figure 2.  1838 J.N. Nicollet and C. Geyer Notebooks	Figure 3. Example of pages from Nicollet Astronomical Notebook from 1839.

 

Figure 4. Pretty Little Hills west of Blue Earth River from Nicollet 1838 notebook.

Scanned images of all these are posted on a Nicollet Web Site that we created for these materials. We felt quite privileged to be able to work with these materials.  One of the things that gave us a real sense of the writers and their work were – as silly as it seems – the imperfections such as stains and ink spots and tears. We have used a compression program called Zoomify to allow the reader to greatly magnify most of the material at the web site for this reason.  Nicollet’s notebooks are full of sketches and observations of temperatures and sky conditions most of which were not/could not be included in the published excerpts. And it was these sketches that allowed us to relocate a number of the places visited by the expedition, for example the “pretty little hills” just west of the Makato (Blue Earth) river in southern Minnesota (Figure 4).

Absent also from the published excerpts were extensive descriptions of plants and their habitats that Geyer recorded.  It was reading these notes that gave us a better understanding of how important Geyer’s observations (written in English) were to our understanding of the landscape, and it was in part these notes that led us to begin to search the Smithsonian National Herbarium for specimens collected by Geyer (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Excerpt from Charles Geyer 1838 Botanical Notebook.

Figure 6. Asclepias viridiflora, an example of a plant specimen collected by Charles Geyer.  Now a part of the collection at Smithsonian National Herbarium, barcode: 00945841

To our pleasant surprise we found many specimens and this was repeated as we searched through the herbaria of the Philadelphia Academy of Science, New York Botanical Garden and Missouri Botanical Garden.  To date we’ve located over 450 specimens and images of many of these specimens are now posted at the web site we have created or available on-line at the aforementioned herbaria.  Unfortunately most of the 1838 specimens that Geyer notes in his field notebook were lost in transit from St. Paul to St. Louis, and while the 1839 specimens are wonderful they are not accompanied by a corresponding field notebook. The location of the 1839 field notebook is a mystery.  It is likely gone forever, perhaps, if it even survived that long, being destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden since Geyer returned to Germany to live near Dresden and was associated with the herbarium there.  If ever relocated this journal would be of tremendous scientific value.  We can only hope.

We continue to work with the field notebooks and other materials.  For example, a student and I will soon embark on a project to transcribe daily weather data collected by Nicollet that we hope to be able to add to a larger effort to rescue historical weather data.   We hope someday to be able to return to Washington to continue scanning materials.

How to use Duck Bombs

 

Detail image of duck bomb during demonstration conducted by Alexander Wetmore and his assistant
 
Until I started working for the Smithsonian, I had no idea the extent of working relationships between the Smithsonian and other federal agencies. At National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) I was fascinated to learn that the Smithsonian works closely with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and United States Geological Survey (USGS), among others. These relationships extend to sharing of collections, specimens, expertise, and have existed for decades. Many of the field books we are currently cataloging were originally created by USDA scientists. It is through this connection that I started to appreciate the scope and impact of the USDA’s role, while working on Alexander Wetmore’s materials created during his time with the USDA, Bureau of Biological Survey.

During 1915-1918, Wetmore was working with farmers, companies, and local officials across the western United States to manage ducks and other birds that were damaging rice crops. His field books document discussions with individual claimants, observations of field damage, months of observations of damage caused by waterfowl and birds of the area, and correspondence with state gaming and fishing departments. Looking through these materials it became increasingly clear how serious the damage and financial impact on farmers became.

Wetmore included news clippings and political cartoons discussing the issues, as those affected became more emphatic about finding a solution. •

• Ducks versus Rice: the country must make up its mind which it prefers to have (8/16/1918)
• Farmers must get rid of ducks to save their rice (8/10/1918)
• Rice growers arm to war on duck invaders : Colusa planter declares guns and ammunition are ready to protect crops (undated)
• The depredations committed by wild ducks (8/26/1918)

Gun clubs and farmers increasingly called for the right to shoot ducks damaging an important local crop. Wetmore, worked with local authorities to find solutions that would balance wildlife and hunter rights, as well as public opinion.

 

Wetmore's assistant demonstrating how to set a duck bomb.

One of these possible solutions was the “duck bomb.” It was an alternative investigated by Wetmore and the USDA: an attempt to discourage waterfowl from crops with minimum physical harm. Notes discuss application and safe placement; Wetmore’s assistant demonstrates these methods in photograph. His notes also indicate that this was not a totally nonlethal deterrent, but as the tone of the article titles imply, the ramifications of crop damage became extreme, and all plausible methods had to be considered.

Wetmore’s field notes don’t explain how things were resolved, so I did a little research, and found the back-story quite compelling. At the time, rice was a recently introduced commercial crop in the United States. According to US Census of Agriculture, it was virtually nonexistent as a commercial crop before 1900. Acres planted nearly tripled across the country from 1900 to 1920. Places like California that struggled with the migratory birds only began commercially planting after 1910. With World War I in progress, the United States became an increasingly important food supplier.

 

 

 

In many cases the wetlands appropriate for cultivating rice were already destinations for migratory birds. The harvest timing correlated too well with migrating birds’ movements. According to a report by the US Rice Federation, in 1917, “the total loss of grain to ducks was estimated to be worth $1 million.”

Since then, these crops have become important parts of the agricultural production in the states Wetmore investigated. Methods of cultivation and conservation have been established to work with bird populations, rendering methods like “duck dombs” unnecessary. For more information, see http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Rice/links.htm on the USDA site.

References

 John M. Eadie, Chris S. Elphick, Kenneth J. Reinecke, Michael R. Miller. (2008). Conservation in Ricelands of North America. p. 9.Retrieved from http://www.usarice.com/doclib/198/4712.pdf.

United States Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service. 1920 Census of Agriculture.p. 771. Retrieved from http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/Historical_Publications/1920/Individual_Crops.pdf

Joseph F. Rock, 1884 - 1962

By Katie Fenster, Department of Botany Intern

Photograph of Joseph F. Rock

Joseph Francis Rock was an Austrian-born U.S. citizen who spent most of his career in Asia.  For my summer internship with the Department of Botany at the National Museum of Natural History, I’ve been researching the lives of botanists whose collections are housed at the museum.  For my research I’ve consulted journals, online sources, and other materials to investigate the lives of scientists whose public renown is often meager in comparison with the value of their work.  Luckily enough for me, the original field books of some of these researchers, including Rock, are housed here in the museum’s collections.  These field books provide primary source information about the botanists, so that even though they did not have celebrity-style publicity, I can learn about their lives.

Rock moved to the United States in his early 20s, becoming a professor of botany at the College of Hawaii in 1911 at the age of 27.  Though Rock had a half-decade worth of experience studying Hawaiian flora before this appointment, he did not possess a graduate degree. 

Rock’s largely self-learned expertise on Hawaiian flora served him well.  In1919, he was selected by the USDA to botanize in South East Asia.  He worked for the USDA until 1924, and then for the next twenty-six years, Rock traveled throughout Asia, working for various U.S. institutions including Harvard University and National Geographic.  His research was in the fields of botany and anthropology.  

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History now houses Rock’s field books from his time in South East Asia working for the USDA.  These field books reveal Rock’s progression in knowledge as he became more familiar with the local flora.  The notations accompanying plant numbers of his earliest collections begin with vague descriptors including “tree,” and “shrub.”  Despite the lack of specific classification names, as I read Rock’s detailed note on each plant, I could easily imagine the flora.  For example, when describing plant 8755, he notes “alpine plants forming nests [of] tubular flowers [that are] purplish blue to reddish lavender [and are] covering up mossy boulders in [the] alpine region of Lila.” Even as Rock learned to identify genera of his subjects, Rock maintained his meticulous note-taking. Rock used colorful metaphors in his 1920 journal, describing a species of castanopsis as “a leguminous shrub [that is] densely pubescent with seed pods erect on the upper surface of the branches.”

Included with the pages of this journal is a beautiful, detailed map of a river that his crew explored.  This map incorporates camp locations, dates, scenery that Rock photographed and, a local myth about the red cliff at Pa Wing Choo.  The story goes that Princess Rata and her lover were escaping from her disapproving father via horseback when they tumbled to their death off the legendary cliffs.

Page 3 of a 9-page hand-drawn map detailing Joseph Rock's route.	Page 6 of a 9-page hand-drawn map detailing Joseph Rock's route.

I had a blast exploring Rock’s field books, and I think the coolest part about them is that, though they were written almost 100 years ago, the data within them is still relevant today.  For instance, some of Rock’s photographs document indigenous peoples prior to assimilation and provide insight into their cultures at a specific point in time.  Additionally, his plant specimens and plant descriptions can be compared to similar specimens collected today, to research species variation and change over time.  In these ways, Rock’s research and the research of many other botanists and anthropologists remain timeless.

Bibliography

Chock, Alvin K. “Joseph F. Rock 1884-1062.” Taxon 12 (April 1963):89-100.

Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. “Joseph Frances Charles Rock (1884-1962).” http://huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu/HIBD/Departments/Archives/Archives-HR/Rock.shtml

Rock, Joseph F. Field Notes, National Herbarium Botany Library (1920-1924).

Wagner, Jeffrey. “The Botanical Legacy of Joseph Rock.” Arnold Arboretum, n.d. http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/860.pdf

 

On Land and at Sea: Two Intern Flickr Sets on The Commons

    

 

Summer is drawing to a close for interns at the Smithsonian Institution.  Our own interns, Jenny Mathias and Emily Hunter, have left us with well over 600 catalog records, blog posts, and two spectacular sets of images now available to view on Flickr's The Commons.  These sets were created using images Jenny and Emily encountered during their internship.  We asked Jenny and Emily what inspired their selections of the images in their Flickr sets.  Here is what they had to say.

 

Field Book Lantern Slides by Jenny Mathias, MLIS Candidate, Pratt Institute

The first collection I cataloged for the Field Book Project consisted of lantern slides.  Who knew these beautiful 3.25 x 4 inch, hand painted, glass objects were also field notes?  Imagine my delight at seeing with my very eyes exactly what collectors saw in the field on the Smithsonian-Roosevelt African Expedition of 1909 (Smithsonian Institution Archives Acc. 06-093).  The next collection I cataloged at SIA was a collection of lantern slides documenting the work conducted by Division of Vertebrate Paleontology (SIA RU424). These slides include images of Barbour, Wortman, and Gidley, and countless other unnamed field researchers collecting and preparing fossils of dinosaurs and large mammals for display in the museum.  My flickr set contains just 19 of the 115 glass lantern slides I saw during the first 2 weeks of my internship.  Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Pacific Ocean Biological Survey by Emily Hunter, MLS, University of Maryland

 

 

 

 

After cataloging textual field notes by over 40 Pacific Ocean Biological Survey scientists, I was delighted to find two manuscript boxes of photographs, offering visual depictions of species I had read so much about.  Most of the photographs in the collection are of birds, representing the major focus of the biological survey to observe and band sea birds.  In creating this grouping of images, I was inspired by the range of species represented, the beauty of the photographs, and of the birds themselves.  Images include photographs captured up-close of birds in their natural habitats, as well as interesting nest constructions, and eggs, and a couple of illustrations by researchers in the field.

I was struck by the level of detail of the markings on a Fairy term egg that seemed almost to be scribbled on with a magic marker like a modern work of art.  A Black-footed albatross looking down towards the egg at its feet is kind of...well, moving.  A photograph of birds swirling over building ruins on East Island freezes a moment of blissful chaos.  Perhaps my favorite image, however, is a photograph of a Leach's storm-petrel specimen, held by its captor, and cropped square to show only the outstretched arm and hand holding the dead bird.  There is something both gentle and sad about this image.  The cropping, the soft background, and the warmth of the hand contracted with the sharp focus and stiffness of the specimen intrigued me.  The content is scientific, but the photograph is quite artistic.

 

Flora of North America Reports on the Importance of Access to Field Books

The latest issue of the Flora of North America newsletter highlights two presentations on field books given at the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC).  The first presentation was given by Rusty Russell, Principal Investigator on the Field Book Project. The second presentation was delivered by Andrew Doran, Administrative Curator of the Herbaria at the University of California, Berkeley.  Doran desribed resources for providing improved access to scanned field books from the important collections of Willis Linn Jepson, Ynes Mexia, and Joseph Rock.

Read the Flora of North America newsletter here: http://fna.huh.harvard.edu/files/FNA-Newsletter25%281%29_hi-res.pdf.

To view the Field Book Project slides from the presentation, check out our May 31 post.

Life in the Field: a Reflection on Cataloging Field Notes in the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program

By Emily Hunter, Cataloging Intern

 

Allen Anderson and Allen Young hold up a Black-footed Albatross.

My introduction to field notes came five short weeks ago, when I started my work as Cataloging Intern for the Field Book Project. I began by cataloging the field notes in the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program in the rather large Smithsonian Institution Archives collection Record Unit 245.

The Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program (or POBSP for short), was a Department of Defense grant-funded project led by the Smithsonian Institution to survey plants and animals in an area of the Pacific Ocean dotted with islands and atolls. Much of the project focused on observing and banding pelagic birds.

Working through the loose manuscripts containing the field notes of Smithsonian Institution staff researchers, I began to imagine what life in the field was like. As a budding librarian and archivist, I allowed the records themselves to begin to build the story for me. As I cataloged each item (“items” ranged from a single field book to a folder of manuscripts or photographs) I skimmed, stopping here or there to read full entries and connect the dots. Reading the field notes of over 40 researchers allowed me a window into the daily lives of the researchers, and a taste of the diversity of personalities of the project staff.

From their narrative journal entries to their to-do lists and poetic observations, the researchers came alive as real people doing similar work, but with different outlooks, experiences, and perspectives. Minor differences of opinion made me laugh now and then, for example, while some researchers captured the elegance of birds in pencil sketches, another declared, “this is the ugliest bird I have ever seen!”

 

Kenneth C. Balcomb banding a young Black-footed albatross on Laysan Island, June 12, 1966.

I began to understand what life in the field in the 1960s was like. Or I like to think so. That’s the beauty of reading primary sources—feeling like you’re in someone else’s shoes.

Surely it isn’t so difficult to relate to these young men—at the time of the survey they were roughly my age, camping on Pacific islands I could only dream of, covered in bird droppings (several field books were plastered with the hard evidence), camping, sweltering in the sun, or spending sleepless, sometimes nauseating, nights at sea. They observed birds at all hours, banded them, collected specimen, and explored burrows looking for eggs, and chicks.

An entry by Patrick Gould, October 1966, was so poetic and descriptive, that I couldn’t help but feel I was on Laysan Island myself:

 

A large donut lying on its side in the Blue Pacific. It’s edge a broad belt of off-white coral sand, its rim a bright Scaevola green, low and lush greeting abruptly to sand and clumps of bunch grass, to bunch grass and narrow dense covering of Spomoea, to a brackish lagoon. Blue sky, pock-marked with out of focus white clouds, dotted with black Great Frigatebirds, white Red-tailed Tropicbirds and black and white Red-footed and Blue-faced Boobies. In the evening the air is filled with the [calls] of Wedge-tailed Shearwater and Bonin Island Petrel. Black and Common Noddy Terns are everywhere.

(Entry in the field book of Patrick J. Gould Leewards Survey 17, Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program, Laysan Island, October 1966) 

 

Larry Huber photographs Noddy tern on East Island, French Frigate Shoals, as part of the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program, August 9, 1965.

Cataloging field notes is challenging and rewarding. I’ve learned a great deal in my attempts to read messy handwriting, decipher cryptic symbols and notations. I’ve experienced several minor “Aha!” moments, one of which was when I realized that “RT” means Ruddy turnstone while “RTTB” means Red-tailed tropicbird. As a non-expert, it was interesting to read observations of bird behaviors, roosting patterns, or nest construction. More than anything though, I liked getting a glimpse of what life was like for these researchers, doing what they love—alternately exciting, boring, hot, serene, difficult, or extremely beautiful—out in the field.

Mammalogy at the Intersection of Mercy and Truth

By Jenny Mathias, Cataloging Intern, Field Book Project

 

One of the first collections I cataloged for the Field Book Project was the notebooks of mammalogist Vernon Orlando Bailey, Smithsonian Institution Archives Record Unit 7267.    At the time I encountered Bailey’s notebooks, field books were new to me as a genre of archival material and it was through the Bailey field books that I first experienced the pleasure of reading someone else’s field notes.  Bailey proved an excellent travel guide and his field books introduced me to just how much fun these guys and gals have while collecting specimens all over the world, and how much contemplation and observation takes place out in the field.   The Bailey field notes introduced me to the concept of Life Zones, popularized in the late 19^th and early 20^th century by Bailey’s mentor, collecting companion, and eventual brother-in-law C. Hart Merriam.   While Bailey’s specimen lists were at first difficult to decipher, his sparse, and insightful narrative passages and poetic ponderings gave me my first clues to what it was he was doing in the field.  

 

 

Dipodops or kangaroo rats, which Bailey refers to in one of his poems and drawings, were a life-long subject of his research for the USDA’s Bureau of Biological Survey, as were coyotes and wolves.  Collecting animal specimens for study and for display often requires trapping them.   In his notes, he points out that this can cause immense and often unnecessary suffering on the part of the animal in question.   He negotiated the tricky position faced by many biodiversity researchers – one where compassion, even love, for the animals studied meets the understanding that these animals are often harmed in the course of our study of them.  Bailey also clearly knew that animals, particularly predators like coyotes and wolves and ‘pests’ like rodents, would inevitably be killed by humans in order to protect livestock and crops. 

 

 

He wrote articles on the subject for scholarly and popular audiences. Manuscripts of some of these articles are also available as a part of Record Unit 7262.  One particular favorite of mine is the annotated manuscript was originally titled “Bobbity and Bitty: The long and solitary lives of two little Pocket Mice”.  In it, Bailey describes the collection and observation of two Perognathus pacificus using humane traps. The little pocket mice he named Bobbity and Bitty were from the coastal sand dunes of southern California and he chronicles their behavior both in their natural habitat and within the human–made world of Bailey’s own family and friends. 

 

 
Bailey devoted himself to the design and manufacture of more humane traps and the education of the public on how to use these traps in order to control and study animal populations.  At his funeral in April  1942, Reverend John Van Schaick quoted from the Eighty-fifth Psalm: “Mercy and truth have met together.” (Zahnsiser, 1942, p. 6).   Bailey strove for both truth in the form of scientific research and mercy in the form of compassion for his wild subjects.  He consistently advocated for the simultaneous rights of humans to study the creatures of the natural world and for the rights of these wild animals to be treated with the dignity they deserve. 

 

Zahniser, H. (January 01, 1942). Vernon Orlando Bailey 1864-1942. Science (New York, N.Y.), 96, 2479, 6-7.

What We Catalog: Reflections on Internship Season

The Smithsonian Institution Archives is in the full throws of internship season.  Our office is burgeoning with bright and enthusiastic summer staff.  We've worked hard to guide them so that they can learn and produce meaningful work during their few months here.  The Field Book Project has two cataloging interns, who are getting an intensive course in what a field book is  and have added substantially to the number of records in our registry.


Emily Hunter, Field Book Project Intern, Summer 2011

As we've guided their work, it has made me review my experience and processes with cataloging and the goals of the project.

Every time I approach another item in a collection, I have to ask "is this a field book?" The Field Book Project defines it as a record of collecting events conducted for biodiversity research.  The definition extends to describe format types and varying types of information.  I find it important that discussions about the definition have always sought to include, not exclude.

  
Jenny Mathias, Field Book Project Intern, Summer 2011

The decision process for item inclusion continues to evolve, but we always return to the guiding principle and inspiration of the project.  We catalog items that inform and contextualize a collecting event.  We ask the following questions to determine an item's relevance, although none of these factors alone guides our decision.

• Was it created during field research?
• Does it give important location information about an expedition?
• Does it tell us what other wildlife was present at the time of collecting?
• Is there information about weather conditions?
• Do images document details about a collecting site's environment -- its terrain and area vegetation?
• Does it show other scientists present whose work would also give details about the day or environment?

Our project seeks not only to catalog these items, but also to increase access to them down the road.  For this reason, item records provide metadata that will become the foundation for when field books can be digitized, making the field books more accessible to researchers.  In cases where items include information beyond describing a collecting event, some basic description of that other information is recorded in the item record, to provide context for the entire material content.  Thus, an item record provides a description of the item as a whole. 

Items often include information that does not directly illuminate a collecting event.  A field book might include family history information or comments about contemporary politics.  This information is often noted in the record so that the metadata will more accruately describe the item and add context to the collecting event.

So what will this mean to a user?  Combined with the wide range of information about a collecting event, we are recording details that may be of use to a researcher outside the natural history scope.  It is not our primary purpose, but the requirements for future work have this pleasant side effect.  These details are succinctly described, but the bread crumbs are there for a researcher to find the unexpected at the item level.  These two aspects often inspire the blogs posted to the project website. 

So what have we found?  Keep up with our blog to find out.  Watch for upcoming blogs as our interns share their finds.

"Mammalogy at the intersection of mercy and truth" Jenny Mathias and "Life in the Field" By Emily Hunter