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> ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]