Evergreen Natural History Database

iPod Tours of Evergreen's Ecosystems: Accessing ongoing faculty and student field research

 

A 2007 NWACC Concept Grant Project

We're developing iPod Notes materials about the natural history of our forested 1,000 acre campus, its 1,000 meter beach and similar Pacific Northwest lowland environments. A database backed website will provide an easy way for students and faculty in our interdisciplinary curriculum to upload and share work in ecology, visual art and natural history writing with each other and the public. Students will be able to work in the field with identification keys and other multimedia materials for iPods derived from the database - guides to the campus' trails, beach, and ecological communities combining linked text files, photographs, art images, and audio ranging from bird calls and Coast Salish nomenclature to readings from Northwest poets and student nature writing. These will be downloadable by iPod owners and available for other campus users on iPods loaned by the library. On the web and a library terminal the database itself will be searchable by scientific or common names, by informal categories like ants or trees, by author, by season of the year, or by campus location. Users will have access to accumulating species accounts with field notes and links to other resources such as student and faculty research reports and other Internet natural history websites; past student writing and art about natural history; a programmed sequence of seasonal displays generated automatically from the collection about recurring campus natural phenomena of interest; and information about where to look for them. (Users will also be able to subscribe to an email list broadcasting these seasonal suggestions.)