Mohonk Preserve Historical Observational Index Card Natural History Data

Study Extent

Mohonk Preserve co-founder and prominent regional naturalist Daniel Smiley was an avid observer and recorder of the natural world around him. He methodically recorded observations on 3x5 index cards throughout his life and trained his associates and successors to do the same. This resulted in a unique, detailed record of the flora and fauna of the Shawangunk Ridge over many decades. Each index card contains information similar to a museum specimen label (i.e. date, location, observer’s name, taxonomy), and other pertinent information such as weather, behavior (for animals), phenological information, and historical context. Many cards also contain additional narrative notes.

Sampling

The first step in digitizing the natural history index card collection was to produce an image scan for the front (and, if relevant, back) of each card. This was completed by Mohonk Preserve’s Digitization Technician with the assistance of volunteers. Scanned images of the cards were uploaded to the Zooniverse Notes from Nature platform for transcription by remote volunteers. Staff provided support in designing the project, troubleshooting issues that came up during the transcription process and responding to volunteer questions. In July of 2020, Mohonk Preserve publicly launched the project on Zooniverse, titled “A Century of Natural History Observations”. This original launch of the project only contained a subset of cards, mainly bird and plant species. This first set of cards was completely transcribed by the end of October 2020, and a second set of cards was added to the project in early November 2020. In total, 14,435 cards were added to the Zooniverse project, and 2,657 volunteers from around the world contributed to the transcription effort. All uploaded cards were completely transcribed in early June of 2021.

Quality Control

Once volunteer card transcription was completed, staff began the process of data review and cleaning. In order to help catch errors in transcription, Zooniverse will present the same card to four different volunteers. If all four volunteers transcribe the same information, then that card is accepted and considered complete. If, however, there are differences in the transcriptions, Zooniverse will present the card to at least one more volunteer. If the card still comes back with uncertainty, it will be sent back to the developers as incomplete. Due to volunteer difficulties in interpreting observer handwriting, volunteer inconsistencies in spelling and punctuation, and idiosyncratic notation and abbreviation styles by the original observers, a large number of index cards were returned as incomplete. Incomplete cards were replicated – sometimes multiple times – in the transcription spreadsheet, and data cleaning focused first on removing replicates. This was accomplished by a combination of manual review and coded scripts in R. Subsequent data cleanup focused on correcting discrepancies in common names, reconciling common names with current scientific names, and accuracy-checking observer and location data. Finally, data were reorganized to meet Darwin Core standards and linked to appropriate image records for the original scanned index cards.

Method steps

1. Mohonk Preserve co-founder and prominent regional naturalist Daniel Smiley was an avid observer and recorder of the natural world around him. He methodically recorded observations on 3x5 index cards throughout his life and trained his associates and successors to do the same. This resulted in a unique, detailed record of the flora and fauna of the Shawangunk Ridge over many decades. Each index card contains information similar to a museum specimen label (i.e. date, location, observer’s name, taxonomy), and other pertinent information such as weather, behavior (for animals), phenological information, and historical context. Many cards also contain additional narrative notes.

Collected in the vicinity of Mohonk Preserve on the Shawangunk Ridge in New Paltz, Ulster County, NY, USA