American Ornithologists' Union[edit]

I recently made additions to the page including some an organization infobox, structure, history and citations. I discovered that the previous version was a direct quote from a WP blocked site and wanted to improve the article. I'm looking for suggestions on how to improve it further or confirmation that it's OK for now (since it's listed as 'low importance'). DocTree (talk) 19:25, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Missing content comes first - think about adding - number of members (local branches??), variation in membership over its 128 years - circulation of publications, other significant collaborative books it has enabled publication of (bird guides etc.), political activism (e.g significant conservation areas etc. it has helped preserve) - I'll think more on this but these are the first things that come to mind. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:45, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. That's quite a challenge you've given me. It's going to take lots of time for me to finish this article.

• No local branches of the AOU. Most (all?) members are also members of local, collegiate, state or regional bird or ornithological organizations or of specialized groups focusing on a particular Class, Family, Genus or Species. I know membership numbers varied widely but obtaining those numbers can only come from AOU itself.
• The number of distinct publications is huge but the number of copies of each that are printed is relatively small. Most are distributed only to members and to college and university libraries that subscribe. All bird guides for North America and probably for the western hemisphere depend on AOU pub's for standard naming conventions.
• Until late in the 20th century, the AOU avoided political activism. Members wanted a purely scientific society. Studies and publications of the AOU were used to justify conservation legislation and the AOU supported conservation organizations in many ways including financially. As far as I can determine, the Conservation Committee wasn't a permanent committee of the AOU until the late 1980s and didn't do much until the 1990s.

The AOU is an "often quoted, rarely written about" group. The best source of information about them is their own journal, The Auk. I located a history of the AOU published for their 100th anniversary by a university press and one other book about ornithology in the 20th century that contains substantial information about the AOU. I requested copies through an inter-library loan program. That's pretty much all I can find for secondary sources other than announcements of conventions or release of books or updated taxonomy lists. I'll work on finding more as I have time to do so. Thanks again for looking over the article. DocTree (talk) 03:48, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Annual reports often have membership numbers in them - and sometimes societies will publish introspective articles on their history. "Activism" might be too strong a word, but there might have been some other proposals to governments etc. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:29, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]