(when it’s too hot this summer to join a New Brighton Work Party?)

DISCOVERY, the Journal of Nature Vancouver, is indexed periodically to make its contents more easily found. This was last done in 2010, so volunteers are invited to a one-time work party to help get us up to date. This is easy technically: copy/paste the table of contents (T.O.C) into a text document, tinker with the format slightly, and assemble the results into one big list. The “RE-” part of the initiative is that volunteers are also asked to REad/REview content that catches their eye, in case we RE-discover information and ideas that would be useful to bring forward. For example, Volume 40 (2011) included a great Nature Vancouver Activity Survey that collected responses not only about member satisfaction and member aspirations but also member suggestions for directions that NV could take, e.g. “… Conservation Section … needs a higher profile so the wider membership understands what it does (p. 42)”. Some articles and photos are just fun to revisit or – for new members – to see for the first time. Others will give pause for pondering: That was then; how’re things now? Are we needed? Do we have new tools they didn’t have before?

Please email Discovery@naturevancouver.ca before May  17 if you might be interested in helping. Details will be available after we know the size of the work party, but the basic plan has two components. “Part 1” is homework: Participants will each download an issue of interest – from Vol. 40 to Vol. 53 on the DISCOVERY page – copy out/tidy up the T.O.C as a more detailed list and then look for content they feel useful to bring forward. (We have hard copies for some issues, if you prefer those.) “Part 2” is when the work party gets together (details TBA, but probably in person) to collate the lists and discuss items to highlight in a blog. The assembled draft index, perhaps with annotations, will go onto the Discovery webpage as a plain but useful document until we get around to putting together a nice thick volume 
(like the two previous indexes: 1972-1993 and 1994-2010).