I think it is too bad that no effort has been made to make CBC data
electronically available, but the expense involved in data entry would
be immense. Even for a single year.

I know that HMANA, the organization that collates raptor migration data
for North America, has not entered their mound of data which amounts to
a molehill in comparison with CBC data! This despite the use of standardized
keypunch forms used to by counters to report to HMANA.

However, there is a new development which I find exciting, as it attacks the
problem at the root. With some funding from the National Biological Survey,
custom software is being developed to be used with portable computers
powered by solar-recharged batteries for future use at count sites. For
counts like those I work on, daily data is currently summarized and
transcribed on the above-mentioned keypunch forms. In the future, we'll
just enter them. Presumably these folks will take precautions to train
counters in proper data backup techniques, and the software will be implemented
with the reliability of the data in mind as the machine will operate in
an outdoors environment (as a software engineer I worry about stuff like
this, of course).

Anyway, the best way to get data electronically entered is to do so when
the data is captured. Obviously, this doesn't attack the problem of
making past data available, but at least the paper mountain will stop
growing at some point.

Now, if we'd just do this with the national deficit...

-Don Baccus-