I was looking around in the Smithsonian Institution's on-line catalog of
bird specimens the other day, and found an intriguing record that
appears to have been overlooked by Ohio researchers---a specimen of a
gyrfalcon from 1971 in Circleville, Ohio. This is only the fifth known
specimen of an Ohio gyrfalcon, and to my way of thinking it's far more
significant than a hundred eBird lists from mobs of listers reporting
far more pedestrian species at stake-out sites.
        Most of the large bird collections have computerized their holdings and
make them available on line. There are various services to access these
data; one example is ORNIS, which offers searchable lists for over 70
North American institutions, including the major national repositories.
You can search by species, or locale, or year. eBird too could offer a
national database of this information, but I suspect they are far more
interested in recruitment and vetting contemporary field reports,
evanescent as they may be.
        Ohio hosts some significant collections, many of which have recently
catalogued all their holdings electronically, but as far as I know only
one of them makes these data available to the public: the
non-participating institutions include our three largest and most
prestigious: the Ohio State University, the Cincinnati Museum of Natural
History, and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. And there are
more. The only significant Ohio museum which freely shares data from its
holdings, to the best of my knowledge, is the Dayton (Boonshoft) Museum,
with ~5000 specimens. At the larger museums, inquisitive Ohioans can ask
for and usually receive details on a given species or specimen, but
their complete new databases are not open for research by the public. A
lot of my friends and acquaintances have volunteered many months for the
drudgery of entering these data for the museums involved, and I wonder
how they feel when the public cannot consult their work.
        This may not bother many readers of this message, but we all use
compilations of data like these in learning about our bird life, and you
should be concerned when it's not available to the public. Your life
list may seem precious, but far more important are accurate and complete
lists for your city, your county, and your state, which are valued by
everyone.
Bill Whan
Columbus




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