McIntyre Library is excited to unveil our first crowdsourced transcription project, the James Newman Clark Project. You can help us make part of the library’s collections more accessible to everyone by reading and transcribing documents in this project. This archival collection contains field notes, diaries and correspondence from James Newman Clark, a significant amateur ornithologist who left us detailed records of birds throughout Western Wisconsin. Everything you need to know to get started is available from the site, https://lib02.uwec.edu/Clark/, so get ready to read some 19th-century handwriting and help us transcribe this great resource!
Clark’s interest in birds is first recorded in his diaries beginning in the 1880s. His expertise became well known, and the seminal publication Birds of Wisconsin relied heavily on Clark’s notes. In addition to his activities observing and recording information about birds, Clark was also a self-taught taxidermist. His home in the Eau Claire, Wisconsin, area served as an informal ornithological museum. After his death in 1928, his ornithology collection was donated to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. This taxidermy collection is currently on display in L.E. Phillips Hall Science Hall on the UW-Eau Claire campus.
