I have a lot of respect for those of you who have chosen to dedicate your
time and energy to serving on the Ohio Bird Records Committee (OBRC), so I
hope this email is received by all as constructive criticism. :-)  I've
always had great interactions with the OBRC, and am thankful that I live in
a state that even has one. Just thought I'd share a little feedback from
membership while we were on the subject.

After reading Scott's email, I wanted to also urge the OOS and OBRC
committee members to look at how the OBRC can be improved. Specifically,
the interaction between the committee and Ohio birders.

I see two main areas that could stand a few improvements:
(1) Access to historic and recent committee decisions.
(2) Streamlined, easily navigated, and well organized webpages.

Take a look at the OBRC website
http://www.ohiobirds.org/site/committee/overview.php
<http://www.ohiobirds.org/site/committee/overview.php>

For a comparison in another state, check out
http://cfobirds.org/records/reports.htm.  Recently the Colorado Bird
Records Committee (CBRC) put all of their reports since 1973 online. The
most recent report? January 2013.  What a wealth of information!  The
format of the reports is also worth noting, e.g., each includes the names
of the committee members voting, etc.

Both have online submission forms (excellent!), a lot of great information
on the site, but the archive of past reports is sorely missing from the
ORBC website. Plus, there is room for a bit more transparency as to who is
on the committee.

Finally, getting back to some of Bill Whan's comments, it would be
FANTASTIC to see this new mechanism of reporting birds via eBird somehow
integrated into the OBRCs practices and educational materials. There should
be a partnership here, not a competition for rarity reports.  That
partnership would benefit both eBird and the OBRC in terms of the quality
and quantity of reports each receives, and thus improve the quality of
services both provide to Ohio birders now and in generations to come. For
example, I'd love to have OBRC record numbers to include in my eBird
checklist comments to show that my sighting was accepted by the OBRC and so
someone who reads that comment in eBird knows to go to the OOS website to
find the details in the report.

eBird users have a lot they can learn from the OBRC about how to document
birds well here in Ohio, and the OBRC has a lot they can learn about making
the whole data submission and data acquisition process easier on birders --
something key to increasing participation, and maintaining a high level of
data quality across the board.

Good birding,
Paul Hurtado
Columbus, OH

PS: In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a big fan of eBird (both as a
birder and scientist), a volunteer moderator of the eBird Rarity Photos
group on FlickR, and I do my best to submit OBRC rarity reports when I'm
lucky enough to have reason to do so. :-)
<http://people.mbi.ohio-state.edu/hurtado.10>

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