managing references (1 Viewer)

I'm curious to know how birders manage access to the vast amounts of reference material currently available for matters such as identification. If I want to look up the finer points of identification regarding a 'difficult' taxon I have the following potential sources:

good quality field guides! (1st stop Collins?)
Other more specialist guides dealing with particular groups/ families
Google text & image search & associated online refs
i/d papers in any one of a number of different journals
forum discussions (link to online refs/ Google search above)
(Also personal notes & own photo library, DVD guides etc)

Does anyone claim to have a decent 'one-stop-shop' system which lays everything at their fingertips and might save time flinging round books and old journals and trawling through irrelevant stuff on the web?

Jhanlon said:

Does anyone claim to have a decent 'one-stop-shop' system which lays everything at their fingertips and might save time flinging round books and old journals and trawling through irrelevant stuff on the web?

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Nils van Duivendijk's recently published Advanced Bird ID Guide. He's done the hard work for us and assembled it in a nice user friendly, bullet point system. It is already saving me loads of time.

It's a fantastic publication if your mind works in a logical way; however if you are either visually or kinaesthetically minded, the lack of pictures/photos may not be ideal.

cheers Rich, that suggestion seconded on a PM. I glanced at a copy as we hurtled towards Blakeney after the Empid and remained unconvinced but at ten quid which can't be bad I think I'll buy a copy. Also been reminded of the existence of Eurobirding.com which has potential, though of course it is more of an index system and you still need access to the journals.

I'm wondering if a listing spreadsheet might not be useful for updates & cross referencing - does anyone else keep similar? With more & more info available it really helps being organised with this stuff.

cheers
James

Rich Bonser said:

Nils van Duivendijk's recently published Advanced Bird ID Guide. He's done the hard work for us and assembled it in a nice user friendly, bullet point system. It is already saving me loads of time.

It's a fantastic publication if your mind works in a logical way; however if you are either visually or kinaesthetically minded, the lack of pictures/photos may not be ideal.

Click to expand...