By Bryan Watts
9/30/2020

In late 2019, CCB worked with William & Mary’s Swem Library to upload 220 technical reports to Scholarworks in an effort to make research findings more accessible to other researchers and the public.  During the first eight months of 2020, reports have been downloaded more than 1,400 times by researchers from around the world.  In late 2020, CCB will upload another 100 reports with more planned for the future. 

CCB is a research unit within William & Mary that focuses exclusively on bird populations of conservation concern.  We conduct research with applications to 1) the development and evaluation of state, federal and international policies related to bird populations, 2) the development and effectiveness of management techniques, and 3) the basic ecology and distribution of species that have value to conservation decisions.  As global experts, CCB biologists serve as advisors to governments and NGOs throughout the world on many species of conservation concern.

Over the past three decades, CCB has published hundreds of papers in primary literature and produced technical reports for government agencies.  These documents address a wide range of questions, species, and geographic areas.  Although most published papers are available online, technical reports have been less accessible.  The partnership with Swem Library is an effort to make CCB’s portfolio of technical reports both more visible and more accessible to the research and management community.  Our hope is that by pulling down barriers of access this work may help to facilitate greater conservation success.