The Illinois Ornithological Records Committee (IORC) has recently made publicly available, via a set of web pages, a variety of information related to its work. They are found at http://geoffwilliamson.info/iorc/. Importantly, a section of these pages regarding documentation of bird records represents a portion of the IORC archives. This archival material includes documentary items sent to IORC (mostly written documentation and physical evidence in the form of photographs, videos, and sound recordings, but also a few other items) plus also the evaluation votes and comments of IORC members. The web pages from 2011 to the present are essentially complete with respect to the documentary materials. With regard to votes and comments of IORC members on records, IORC’s practice now is to provide here all votes and comments going forward; however, these are not now available for all records.
Each year’s listing of records includes for all records the serial number, species or form, county, first and last date of observation, and status of the record. Where this or other information on these web pages differs from that in published IORC reports, the latter represent the official record.
meeting in the Field Museum of Natural History. Left to right: Bob Hughes, Paul Sweet, Adam Sell,
Doug Stotz, Vida Kalina.
IORC is making all this material web-accessible, and hence readily available, to inform better the birding public about IORC’s work and to facilitate access to at least part of its archives. IORC hopes that this material’s availability will encourage the submission of documentation of rare and unusual birds in Illinois, will help to improve the understanding of the documentation and review process, and will by example help to improve the quality of submitted documentary materials.
Question, suggestions, and corrections may be directed via email to the IORC Secretary, Geoff Williamson, at iorcommittee <at> gmail <dot> com.