I just acquired and catalogued a copy of Florence Merriam Bailey's magnum opus Birds of New Mexico (1928), a large, heavy tome that, as described in the Catalogue, took nine years to find a publisher for. Bailey was a very prominent ornithologist at a time when there were many - birds and birdwatching were particularly popular. Bailey's is a name I've come across frequently in my reading - I am pleased she is finally represented in the Collection, and her story is most interesting.
The particularly noteworthy aspect of the Catalogue entry - which prompted me to write this entry - is that it contains no fewer than nine references to other writers represented in the Collection - more references than the collected entries for any other single author I can think of off the top of my head, with the possible exception of Teddy Roosevelt. Ernest Thompson Seton, George Bird Grinnell, John Burroughs, Mabel Osgood Wright, Olive Thorne Miller, William Brewster, Alice Eastwood, C. Hart Merriam, and Alice Eastwood are all there.
The things that excite me most about what I am doing here are learning about the authors and the context in which they wrote and, perhaps even more so, seeing the connections among them. In the Master Lists, I at least try to reference other authors whose entries contain a notable reference to the listed author (usually but not always when the listed author has written something in the other book referenced). I have no system for tracking these myriad cross-references other than the site and my head - so the effort might best be described as incomplete at best and scattershot at worst. I've got to give that some thought.
I have started the process (not yet systematically) of bolding the names of authors represented in the Collection when they come up in the Catalogue entries of other authors.
I expect I will publish a separate blog post on the broader subject of cross-references at a later date. But they are an exciting part of the Collection and website.
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