Indexing the Field Club's publications - request for a volunteer
Mark Hanson 3 Church Cottages, Church Road, Boreham, Essex CM3 3EG
It was suggested recently that we improve access to the contents of the Field Club's
publications by updating the indices, and this was thought by Council to be a good idea.
The suggestion is that an index would be produced that was capable of being updated
with the publication of each Essex Naturalist, monograph and newsletter, eventually
being available on CDROM and the website. I looked into the issue, knowing from
experience how difficult it is to access information (on a single species of moth for
example) and found that apart from the old series Essex Naturalist indexing appears to
be at best haphazard and in a lot of cases non-existent - not surprising given the work
involved in producing comprehensive indices. Research reveals the following: -
1) Transactions and Proceedings 1880-1887 - no index
2) Essex Naturalist Volumes I to XXII - indexed to commemorate the Jubilee of the
Club by the then librarian Stephen Bams. This resulted in a single index volume
devoted to volumes I to XXII.
3) Volumes XXIII to XXXII - each have an individual index.
4) Volume XXXIII the last in the old series - as far as I am aware it was never indexed.
5) The New Series monographs (1977-1992) were not indexed (apart from the Epping
Forest volume and this not fully).
6) All the early Field Club monographs (those bound in red coloured boards i.e.
Mycetozoa, Birds of Essex, etc and the later Clay Tobacco Pipe) are all indexed
apart from the volume on the East Anglian Earthquake of 1884.
7) The Essex Field Club 'Bulletins' 1970-1991 (42 volumes) were never indexed.
8) The Essex Field Club Newsletter, issues 1-29 (1991-1999), were never indexed -
there is a lot of important and useful information in these eg plants and insects new
to Essex, biographical material and species lists for sites such as Danbury and
Galleywood Commons and rare bees, wasps and other invertebrates in the Thames
Corridor. It could be a useful project starting on this series before tackling the other
publications.
9) The new A5 format Essex Field Club Newsletter, issues 30-40 (1999-present), is
not indexed.
10) The journal style New Series Essex Naturalist volumes 12-19 (1995-2002) are also
not indexed.
Obviously some of the later material is held on computer and this would presumably
make indexing easier. Indeed if you have internet access, the contents of Essex Naturalist
(New Series) volume 13 onwards, the contents of Essex Field Club Newsletters 30-40
and the pdf files of newsletters 1-29 available on the Essex Field Club website are
already searchable by a search engine such as Google.
It would be of great value if a Club member could undertake at least part of the
responsibility for indexing, bearing in mind that it would be a very long-term project
and would require a certain degree of tenacity and commitment!
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Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 40, January 2003