ORNITHOLOGICAL WORLDWIDE LITERATURE
© 2022 J. Sheppard (in its current format)
Jay Sheppard approached the Trust for Avian Systematics late last year on the subject what was known as the OWL (Ornithological Worldwide Literature).
This had its roots in the collaborative efforts of the editors of the world’s three most trusted ornithological journals (Auk, Ibis, Emu) on “recent publications”. For many years before this sensible collaboration individual journals created their own lists of such publications as a service to their membership and readers. That collaboration led each of the participating journals agreeing to distribute a single multi-page document printed for quarterly issue to subscribers along with their own quarterly issues. That eventually led to the establishment of OWL to provide an online database accessible to all such subscribers and to many others. The data now assembled comes from the years of that collaborative effort, where Jay Sheppard, administered the OWL database and was central to the successes in obtaining contributions from around the world.
The OWL database content is no longer displayed on any other website, but the considerable amount of available historical content of database deserves to be accessed. As a result of Jay’s enthusiasm for making this data available again, the Trust obtained help to convert the database to a format that can be managed within a website. The Trust will not be expanding it to cover more recent years unless a major sponsor proposes to underwrite the cost! But at least now “the OWL database” can be consulted right here in a searchable format.
The Trust is honoured by, and very grateful for Jay’s decision to come to, and to facilitate, this arrangement with the Trust. Due to copyright law, it is not possible to offer such things as scans or PDFs; we can offer only what the database holds.
CONTENT: Approx. 85,0000 records. PERIOD: c. 1980 to 2015