The Field Book Project is a joint initiative of the National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution Archives to improve access to biodiversity field books. 

Collectors’ field notes are important, primary source documents that tell us about the collecting events surrounding scientific research and discovery.  They provide a wealth of information beyond what is typically captured on a specimen label or in subsequent publications.  This supplemental information can provide clues about interspecies relationships, habitats, and other contextual data.  In addition, by comparing contemporary research findings with the data found in historic field books, these materials can help answer big research questions such as how species occurrence and habitats of a particular location have changed over time.

Despite their incredible research and intrinsic value, field books frequently land in the “hidden” category, meaning that they are collections for which little to no documentation exists or that the documentation itself is difficult to locate.

This poster will present an overview of the Field Book Project and its approach to improving access to these important records of biodiversity research.  The overarching goal of the project is to create one online location for scholars and others to visit when searching for field books and other field research materials.  This process will begin as a Smithsonian-wide initiative and lay the foundation for an online Field Book Registry comprised of content contributed by museums and research institutions throughout the country.

The Field Book Project has adopted a rich descriptive approach which includes the adoption of standards and practices from the library, archive, and natural history museum communities.  A “fusion” of metadata schemas, including TDWG’s Natural Collections Description (NCD), the Library of Congress’ Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS), and the archival standard Encoded Archival Context (EAC), supports in-depth and contextualized descriptions of these collections, items, and their creators.  This descriptive framework will be implemented in Islandora, a robust open-source environment that combines the Drupal content management system with the Fedora digital repository.