Smithsonian Field Book Project

About the Project

The Field Book Project began as a partnership between Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) and National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) to identify, locate, and catalog field notes across the Smithsonian Institution in order to increase their discoverability. The Project first made its records available to the public on Smithsonian’s Collections Search Center in 2012. In 2014, the Field Book Project joined with Biodiversity Heritage Library and Smithsonian Libraries to make the field notes more widely available through BHL.

In July 2015, the Project began work on the current two-year grant. The Field Book Project staff will catalog 2,000 field books as well as digitize and making available 2,600 field books on BHL. Project staff will also provide support to the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature Project funded by IMLS as well as Hidden Special Collections and Archives Project funded by CLIR to enable new contributions of field books to BHL.

For more information about the Project and its work, we encourage you to check out the links below.

Additional resources	Links to our records	Social Media
Project Overview and History Project website	BHL's Field book Project collection Smithsonian Collections Search Center Digital Public Library of America Smithsonian Transcription Center	Twitter @FieldBookProj Images on Smithsonian Flickr Field Book Project Blog

Field Book Project and BHL

Below are links to documents designed to offer the reader information about the methods and workflows Field Book Project (FBP) has developed since it began at Smithsonian Institution in 2011, as well as how FBP contributes content to Biodiversity Heritage Library through Macaw (BHL’s Metadata Collection and Workflow System).

This material is particularly geared to institutions who may want to contribute to BHL but are not planning to create MARC records. Please keep in mind, many of the documents are still in draft. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Lesley Parilla, cataloging coordinator at parillal@si.edu.

In addition we recommend the following links to documents created by BHL.

• User Guide for Macaw: http://bit.do/MacawUserGuide (For uploading non-MARC description, look under “Creating items via .CSV upload”)
• BHL Metadata requirements: http://bit.do/BHLmetadata

Document	Summary
Field Book Project FAQ	Overview of Field Book Project and its method of contributing to BHL
Scanning FAQ	Overview of practices SIA developed for digitizing field books for BHL
Conservation FAQ	Discusses basic handling procedures for archival materials
Example of FBP MARC record designed for BHL	Demonstrates how description elements selected and used by FBP display.
FBP BHL metadata mapping	Shows sources and crosswalk of all the description elements that are uploaded to BHL.
Macaw CSV template	Includes a guide, template, template with data, and metadata outline.
Digitization selection criteria	Selection criteria developed by Smithsonian staff for Field Book Project materials

Events and Publications

FBP Publications and Presentations (past)
FBP Publications and Presentations (upcoming)

Resources for Catalogers

Below are the manuals used by Field Book Project catalogers and links to references developed during the cataloging process.

Manuals	References
Field Book Project cataloging manual Handling guidelines for catalogers	Authority Files Research and Reference Resources FBP Metadata To catalog or not to catalog Lists in field books