A different type of animalNicole KearneyCoordinator, BiodiversityHeritage Library Australia Museum Victoria@nicolekearney

Biodiversity Heritage Library

The world’s largest online repository for biodiversity heritage and archival materials.

BHL Australia

What’s in the box?

Ornithology Department Archives

“Estate of Graham Brown – note books”

Why are field diaries so important?

Underutilized resource

Inaccessible in their current state

• single hard copy• single location• uncatalogued• hand-written (in the field)• historic scripts• unsearchable

Allan McEvey, Macquarie Island, 1957.

Our scientists need this data!

Museum Victoria Grampians BioScan Survey, 2012Image: Heath Warwick / Source: Museum Victoria

19312012

Step 1: create individual records

KE-EMuThe collection management database used by many galleries,

herbaria and museums (including Museum Victoria)

Step 2: create digital copies

A digital version in our database

OCR from a page of Graham Brown’s diary

l>^v-^wAl^ livU*^/) Curiae '^tila'* -u^vttcvi Lsefei cit^:< Lv. 1^ Ol^Vm?iJcw , L>w i^-^Otv^ dS^^iL* ll^^Uk^ M/tTM^li?'^ tvc4fi>r '^^-^ G^WtY^^ uve^v. llCCUvlr]^vv\l^ '^L^>u^ l^t^

You can’t search handwriting

http://volunteer.ala.org.au/

DigiVol online transcription portal

Step 3: transcribe & collect the data

http://volunteer.ala.org.au/

Step 4: extract the transcription

17.

Field diary in MACAW

http://volunteer.ala.org.au/

Transcription in MACAW

http://volunteer.ala.org.au/

Step 6: Upload onto Internet Archive

Final destination: BHL

Along with the transcriptions!

But what about the data?

5 x Graham Brown field diaries =

5611 animal sightings

547 mentions of people and organisations

Graham Brown, 1948

Date Species Location09/09/1947 Red Wattle bird Colac, near lake, in flowering gums13/09/1947 Crested Grebes Colac East, end of Church St, mouth

of the creek

13/09/1947 Little Pied Cormorant Colac, perched on the wreck13/09/1947 Mountain Duck Colac East, end of Church St, mouth

of the creek

13/09/1947 Musk Duck Colac, on the lake13/09/1947 Silver Gull Colac, over the lake, opposite

Queen's Avenue

New homes for our field diaries

… in our Scientific Art & Observation Collection.

Final step? Tell everyone!

Thank you for listening

We are indebted to:

• The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL)www.biodiversitylibrary.org

• The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA)www.ala.org.au

• Museum Victoria (MV)www.museumvictoria.com.au

• And 70 amazing volunteers!

@nicolekearney