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CBC Issue



Who wants to read count results on a computer?

I do.

Eight years ago I was writing American Birds asking why they didn't put
the CBC results on-line, and they have, and I say three cheers for a
tremendous effort.  Just imagine what it took to type in 100 years of data
and error check it.

I've compiled counts.  I find entering data on-line easier than on paper,
and AmBirds says the process results in many fewer errors.  I'm all for
that.

I once travelled to NYC, to the offices of American Birds, to look up the
prehistory of the count I compiled in Massachusetts, xeroxing old count
summaries going back to the 1930s.  Now I can get all 60+ years of count
data from that count with a few mouse clicks from home.  Is that
fantastic or what?

Is the online version perfect?  No, but it's very, very good and as far as
I can tell, it's still getting better.  

Do I like the print volume?  Yes, I do.  I still have all my old CBC
summary issues, and occasionally when I'm travelling I'll refer to one to
get a snapshot of winter birdlife in a new area.  I think the biggest risk
of going entirely on-line is that paper journals are a very permanent
thing, and online resources may not be as permanent an archive in the long
term.  But if you're interested in bird populations, the downloadable,
sortable, complete record is infinitely more useful than the paper
version.  I once examined winter records of Saw-whet owls over a 5 year
period across the entire country by going through those thousands of
individual count summaries in the paper version.  It's not efficient.

The one year (1987?) that NAS printed the count summaries in a much more
useful, tabular form, they got deluged by harrumphing mail about how they
were destroying the "integrity" of individual counts.  They went back to
old style summaries.  Ugh.

As a compiler, I didn't like the $5 fee that much, especially when a
previous AmBirds editor, Susan Roney Drennan, justified it in a note to
compilers that would make Enron's accounting practices look honorable.

I know some people feel personally betrayed by the National Audubon
Society.  They're not a perfect organization.

But in the big picture of things, there are worse things you could do in
your life than give $10 a year to the National Audubon Society.


Chris

Christopher E. Hill		
Department of Biology
Coastal Carolina University			Ph: 843.349.2567
P.O. Box 261954					Fax:843.349.2201
Conway, SC 29528				E: chill@coastal.edu

"Science is built of facts the way a house is built of bricks; but an
accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks is a
house."     - Henri Poincare