18,000 Pages from Ink to Internet

Introducing The Birds of North America Online

By Miyoko Chu

The dynamic new Birds of North America Online offers all the information in the monumental printed version, with additional images, sounds, video footage, and electronic search features. New scientific results will continually be added to the 716 species accounts. Eventually the technology behind BNA Online will be used to transform other traditional scientific reference volumes into ?living publications.?

Requiring the work of 700 ornithologists and a decade of effort to come to fruition, The Birds of North America is the most comprehensive reference to the continent's birdlife ever published. Now, in the age of the Internet, this monumental reference series has leaped beyond the limits of the printed word. With all 18,000 pages available electronically, The Birds of North America (BNA) Online is poised to become the first “living publication” of its kind—a dynamic resource continually updated with the latest scientific information, image galleries, sound recordings, and video footage.

Produced by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, BNA Online is accessible at bna.birds.cornell.edu through personal subscriptions and subscribing institutions such as libraries. The electronic version includes authoritative information for all 716 North American breeding bird species included in the printed volumes published by the American Ornithologists’ Union, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Academy of Natural Sciences. Most species accounts draw on information from 100 scientific references or more, including descriptions of behavior, life at the nest, timing and routes of migration, distribution, habitats, population trends, and conservation and management.

With BNA Online, readers can view video clips that illustrate some of the bird behaviors and habitats described in the text. For example, the text explains seven different ways that Peregrine Falcons hunt for prey. What?s the difference between "contour-hugging? and ?shepherding?? Two video clips show dramatic footage of a peregrine using these hunting strategies above a marsh. BNA Online offers about 40 video clips from the Lab of Ornithology?s multimedia Macaulay Library, with hundreds more expected to go online in the next 12 months.

BNA Online also draws on sound recordings from the Macaulay Library to clarify and enliven technical descriptions of bird vocalizations. Audio recordings allow readers to hear, for example, how the ?repeated series of plaintive nasal waa-aa-n? sounds of a Red-breasted Nuthatch differ from the ?regular series of hah-hah-hah? notes uttered by a White-breasted Nuthatch. With a few clicks of the mouse, people can listen to recordings of buzzy Fox Sparrow songs from Yuba Pass, California, and the more clearly whistled phrases from the Copper River drainage in Alaska, and Mooseonee, Ontario, to hear for themselves the striking regional differences described in the text. Readers may also find helpful the accompanying sonograms produced by Raven software from the Lab of Ornithology?s Bioacoustics Research Program.

Unlimited by page restrictions, BNA Online offers more images than the print version could accommodate. An image gallery for each species showcases drawings and photographs of birds and their nests, eggs, and habitats. Contributors include renowned photographers and artists, including Arthur Morris, David Sibley, John Schmitt, and Julie Zickefoose.

Electronic search features make it easier than ever to find the answers to questions about birds. Users can quickly call up information using searches by species, topic, or keyword. Soon, more advanced search features will allow researchers to quickly compile specific information from numerous species accounts?for example average clutch size of all cavity-nesting songbirds, or the range in wingspans of hawks.

The Lab of Ornithology?s Information Technologies group is also developing BNA Online as part of a new Scientific Knowledge and Education Network funded by the National Science Digital Library. BNA Online will serve as the first model in a network that will transform traditional scientific reference volumes into exciting new interactive resources that can be updated with information from authors, experts, and members of the public. Web harvesting devices called ?spiders? will also automatically search the Internet for new sources of information and update bibliographies in real time. With these capabilities, classic works such as The Birds of North America will always reflect the current state of knowledge. The first 18,000 pages are just the beginning.

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Laura Erickson, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-1114. email: lle24@cornell.edu