The Royal Ontario Museum and Bird Studies Canada are currently in the process of digitizing all of the Ontario Nest Records Scheme historical nest records cards to increase access to the data. With about 120,000 cards in the scheme, this will be a slow process, but significant progress is being made.

The first stage of the process is to computerize the 'catalogue' information: species, card number, location, year, and observer information that will allow users to determine the extent of the holdings, and the geographical distribution of nest records in Ontario. Links to search these records will be provided from this page as soon as they become available.

At the same time, we are also scanning the original cards as images to provide a backup of all of the information, and to provide a means of distributing card information to researchers and other interested parties, to ensure the maximum value is achieved from the cards.

The final stage of the process will be to code and type the remaining information on the cards (e.g., numbers of eggs and young on each visit, habitat data, etc.). We are currently developing tools (web data entry pages) that will allow volunteers and researchers to contribute to this process using the scanned images. These should be available some time later in 2001. Stay tuned for details.

In the meantime, if you would like more details on the holdings of the ONRS, check the latest annual report which summarizes the numbers of cards available for each species from each county, or the detailed two-volume series Breeding Birds of Ontario which provides a detailed summary of the breeding biology of each species in Ontario based on the ONRS.