Guest post written by Jason Boczar, Digital Scholarship and Publishing Librarian, and Carol Ann Borchert, Sr. Associate Dean.
One of the touchstones of librarianship is preserving knowledge. Special collections and general collections within libraries around the world keep and preserve texts and other materials to help contextualize historic knowledge. The USF Libraries have many such projects and initiatives in place. Whether it’s USF history (USF Curiosities: A solar rotary?, This Day in USF History: Gasohol) or using collections to advocate for conservation (Endangered Species Day: Using the Archives to Advocate for Conservation), the USF Libraries provide ways to access important works of history and science.
Recently the USF Libraries began the creation of the Searchable Ornithological Research Archive (SORA). SORA is a digital collection of important international ornithological journals. These academic journals, primarily focused on North and South American bird research, go back to the early 20th century! Originally housed with the University of New Mexico, the USF Libraries are carrying forward the important work of SORA. By working with journal editors, the USF Libraries are helping to make the journal content as current as possible.
Another important aspect of librarianship is providing access to materials. It’s not enough that knowledge such as SORA is collected by libraries or researchers. Preserving materials means that they don’t disappear. We want to do more than that. Materials should be available for anybody to use. SORA originally started out as an openly available digital collection for anybody in the world to use, and the USF Libraries is keeping that tradition alive. By keeping these materials freely available to download, researchers continue to have access to decades worth of materials at their fingertips.
Preserving this research is preserving cultural heritage and history. Physical and digital preservation practices such as these help to save the conversations of the past. The history of bird names and sightings can be found through the pages of these journals. Take, for instance, one piece of the discussion of the Prairie Hen:
On the Proper Name for the Prairie Hen. — Probably all ornithologists who have had the opportunity of investigating the matter, or who have carefully read Mr. Brewster’s important article on ‘The Heath Hen of Massachusetts’ in ‘The Auk’ for January, 1885 (pp.80-84), fully agree with Mr. Brewster in regard to the necessity of recognizing two species of the genus Tympanuchus (formerly Cupidonia), and indorse his restriction of the specific name cupido to the eastern bird. No other view of the case, in fact, seems admissible. In giving a new name to the western bird, however, Mr. Brewster has unfortunately overlooked a supposed synonym of T. cupido, which applies exclusively to the western species, as I have very recently discovered in compiling and verifying references pertaining to the two birds. The supposed synonym in question is that of Cupidonia americana Reich. Syst. Av. 1850, p. xxix, based on figures 1896-98 of his ‘Icones Avium’ (Vollständ. Naturg. Huhnerv. Aves Gallinaceæ). The two smaller of these three figures unquestionably represent the western Prairie Hen; the other, a principal figure, is a reduced copy from Wilson (American Ornithology, pl. 27, fig. 1), which, that author tells us, is “A figure of the male….as large as life, drawn with great care from the most perfect of several elegant specimens shot in the Barrens of Kentucky.” (Italics my own.)
It is thus plain that the western Pinnated Grouse, or Prairie Hen, must be called Tympanuchus americanus (Reich.).–Robert Ridgway, Washington, D.C. (Robert Ridgway, Auk, volume 3, issue 1 (January-March). 1886. pp. 132-133. https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/auk/v003n01/p0132-p0133.pdf)
This is a small example of the discussions and debates that surround any academic discipline and, in the above case, about the changing taxonomy of animals. SORA provides a historical viewpoint of bird sightings, bird naming, and bird discussions from around the globe.
But, we recognize that this work isn’t complete. The USF Libraries are hard at work getting all of the material originally housed at the University of New Mexico into our collections and will soon add new content provided by the SORA publishers. Once SORA is fully transferred, there will be new items to form new collections. As the SORA project shows, the work of a library never ceases. As new research is created new research needs to be collected, curated, and preserved.