. Bulletin. Natural history; Science. collection of 325,000 bird skins is perhaps third largest in the United States. Besides Boardman Conover, other volunteers have made and continue to make great contributions to Field Museum. During the mid-1930s Ellen Thorne Smith offered to help with cataloging, card filing, and other routine chores. As she phrases it, "If I'd known that during World War II I'd be keeping the whole Division of Birds operating while the scientists were in the services, I might have hesitated to start!" For many years she has served the Museum in a variety of ways
. Bulletin. Natural history; Science. collection of 325,000 bird skins is perhaps third largest in the United States. Besides Boardman Conover, other volunteers have made and continue to make great contributions to Field Museum. During the mid-1930s Ellen Thorne Smith offered to help with cataloging, card filing, and other routine chores. As she phrases it, "If I'd known that during World War II I'd be keeping the whole Division of Birds operating while the scientists were in the services, I might have hesitated to start!" For many years she has served the Museum in a variety of ways, most recently as founding President of the Women's Board. Currently another volunteer, Blair Winter, spends 372 to 4 days a week checking and compiling data for a projected gazetteer of collecting localities in South America. So many scientists and professional collectors have sent bird and mammal specimens to museums that literally thousands of localities are mentioned on specimen labels. Each year scientists independently must spend hundreds of hours checking out the same references. A published gazetteer of such localities will provide a working tool of incalculable value to generations of scientists. With the direction of mammalogist Hershkovitz and ornithologist Traylor, Blair Winter's work will aid thousands of scientists in years to come. Since its inception. Birds has had two scientists and one or more assistants. It is a museum in a microcosm and illustrates the pattern for Zoology: a mixture of people, library, and collections combining to advance and preserve the fund of man's knowledge concerning the world around him. Financial and time support by individuals from the community; the labors of individual scientists; the accumulation, care, and use of the working tools (library books and specimens)—all these interact complexly over the decades to result in the research, exhibits, and knowledge that the specimens in our storage cases document. But Birds is only one
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, booksubjectnaturalhistory, booksubjectscience
