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American Birds CBC publication: some statistics



As an active CBC participant, albeit a relative
newcomer (ten enjoyable counts so far), I have been
closely following the debate on the National Audubon
Society approach to publishing the results.  For the
past five years I have subscribed to the CBC report
which cost $10 in addition to the $5 for participating
in the count.  Actually, for the 101st CBC report, the
subscription cost was $13, which included $3 for
shipping and handling.  I have enjoyed reading
selected count results in the large volumes.  This
year when I received the summary report I missed
seeing the results for the count circles that I
usually checked, so I logged onto the web-site and
read them on the web.  While the site can use
improvements, and I plan to send several suggestions,
I found it very interesting.  It was very easy to see
the current year's results, but I especially enjoyed
the easy access to historical results for Chapel Hill,
back to 1928, and for Durham, all the way back to
1902!
 
So it seemed to me that a critical piece of
information to inform this debate is how widely the
revised, summary format is being distributed compared
to the previous format.  So, from the web-site, I sent
an email to the National Audubon Society requesting
the relevant statistics on copies printed and copies
distributed.  I was pleasantly surprised to receive a
return phone call from the CBC Director and
Editor-in-Chief Geoffrey LeBaron.  Here are the
statistics he shared with me:

For the 101st CBC report (2000-2001):  3,000 copies
printed, of which 2,000 were distributed to libraries,
etc., and 1,000 were distributed to the 1,000 avid
CBC'ers who had paid their $13 for the big report.

For the 102nd CBC report (2001-2002):  28,000 copies
printed, with a copy distributed to each person who
paid the $5 to participate in the CBC.  An active
attempt was made to limit sending duplicate copies to
those who participated in more than one count.  This
worked for me - I participated in two counts and only
received one report - but in practice is a problem yet
to be fully solved.

I did my own calculations regarding the total pages
printed.  For the 101st report, 3,000 copies times 666
pages comes to 1,998,000 total pages printed.  For the
102nd report, 28,000 copies times 112 pages comes to
3,136,000 pages.  This represents a fifty percent
increase in the number of pages from last year.

Thus, although I enjoyed the previous format, I will
be happy to pay the $5 to participate in many more
CBCs, and am glad that the summary results will be
more widely distributed. I will also be an active user
of the CBC web-site.  Clearly there are many issues
yet to be resolved; for instance, some way should be
found to fund full print-outs of the results for the
library or archive copies. And perhaps a special,
full, edition could be made available for sale.  But
my general feeling is that this new format is an
admirable attempt to minimize printing costs while
maximizing the dissemination of the results of this
classic part of birding.

Alan Johnston
Chapel Hill, NC
alanj46@yahoo.com


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