Abstract
As soon as the AFA Watchbird Archives team put the older articles online, other people found them using the Google web search and Google Scholar search engines. Bird breeders, bird keepers, researchers, zoo keepers, and conservation program managers have already accessed archived Watchbird articles before this announcement went to print.
The team was started by Mary Ellen LePage. Dr. Ian Tizard funded the archive creation by hiring a student worker through the Schubot Exotic Bird Health Center. Constance Woodman from the Schubot Center worked with the Texas Digital Libraries to produce an online archive and developed the process for a graduate student worker to follow while uploading articles. Graduate student worker Maryam Tavakoli applied for a federal award to fund three- quarters of her work hours. By working together, two and half years of pushing got the archives online. It was not always easy, Mary Ellen had many of the older articles scanned, but others had to be tracked down. Gene Hall found an original newspaper print of the 1977 New Castle supplement in storage, and mailed the article to the AFA Office. The supplement was eventually scanned by staff from the Special Collections library at Texas A&M University.
People have immediately utilized the archive. For example, the Red Siskin Initiative project leaders, based out of the Smithsonian Institute, are currently breeding Red Siskins for release in Venezuela. Through the archive, they had access to all the historical Red Siskin Project articles in the Watchbird and passed the archive links to their team. An article on cross-fostering was utilized by a European researcher studying cross-fostering in conservation breeding when Scarlet macaws were used in an emergency to...