History of the Macaulay Library

Introduction

The documentation of bird behavior has been a central goal of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (CLO) since its inception. It was a major focus of the founders of CLO, and from the earliest days, played a crucial role in the Lab's outreach and educational missions.

The documentation format has changed repeatedly over the last 80 years, and CLO was often a key agent in developing and promoting new technologies for that documentation.

The current incarnation of this long history is the Macaulay Library: a digitally based publicly-accessible archive containing the world's largest collection of animal sounds and a rapidly growing video library of animal behavior.

Continue below, or explore the timeline above for a brief synopsis of how the Macaulay Library came to be, and its recurring role in shaping the evolution of both CLO and field studies of animal behavior.