[Bristol-Birds] Birds of Northeast Tennessee publication team faces deadlines !

Looming deadlines for The Birds of Northeast Tennessee to go to
the printer and make ready for press is causing your publication team
from the Bristol Bird Club to march at a quick and steady pace.  

Coordination and gathering up loose ends have made it sometimes hectic.

With help from an ornithologist at the U.S. National Museum in 
Washington, we were able Tuesday to track down a needed element 
for the book.  We are now waiting on the Haddonfield Historical Society
in  NJ, in the small town of Haddonfield, located eighteen miles from the 
city of Philadelphia, to provided a digital file we need.  It was promised
Tuesday.  Dr. Andy Jones has also assisted this search.

Mike Poe has an appointment with Dr. Gary Wallace at Milligan College
today to arrange for materials held there.  He will likely be joined by Rick
Knight.

Review copies of the text and tables have been sent to three contributors
who are busy this week preparing cover quotes for the back cover.

Three reviewers have been selected by the publication team:

    -- an artist and the curator of birds from the North Carolina Museum of
Natural History who was chosen to complete the final paintings 
for Roger Tory Peterson's Field Guide to Birds of the Eastern and 
Central United States.  He was also an illustrator for the  National 
Geographic Society's Field Guide to the Birds of North America and 
drew many of the color plates as well as the Yellow-breasted Chat
on the title page.  

    -- a former technical editor of the Cornell University Laboratory of
Ornithology's national magazine Living Bird.  He has been an editorial
contributor to the birds of New York state and on the editorial committee
of the Wilson Bulletin, journal of the Wilson's Ornithological Society.

    -- the editor of the Ohio state journal of ornithology, The Ohio Cardinal,
curator of birds for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and the
recording secretary for the American Ornithologists' Union.

We are expecting to have dinner Saturday night and make final arrangements
with an artist who is providing some major work for the book.
She is a nationally-famous scientific illustrator and creative artist. 
She has had a new series of paintings, Green Evolution, at the United States 
Botanic Garden Gallery (Washington, D.C.).   Her images have appeared in 
numerous publications, including Art Papers, New American Paintings, and 
Writing the Future: Progress and Evolution (MIT Press), with full portfolios in 
Orion, Shenandoah, and Ecotone.  A number of her paintings have been 
acquired by permanent collections, including the National Academy of Science 
(Washington, D.C.) and the Smithsonian. 

Our distribution committee for the book has identified the following regional
libraries for placing copies in their collections:

Avoca Branch Library (Bristol) 
Bloomingdale Branch Library (Kingsport) 
Sullivan County (Blountville) Library 
Bristol Public Library 
Carter Co./Elizabethton Public Library 
Colonial Heights Branch Library (Kingsport) 
ETSU/Sherrod Library 
Gray Branch Library
Greene Co./Greeneville Public Library 
Johnson City Public Library 
Johnson County Public Library 
Jonesborough Library 
Kingsport Public Library 
Mosheim Public Library 
Northeast State Community College/Basler Library 
Sullivan Gardens Branch Library (Kingsport)
Thomas Memorial Branch Library (Bluff City) 
Unicoi Public Library 
Watauga Regional Library 

This committee is working on planning delivery details at this time.

The BBC received three additional checks in the mail this week
and several checks and cash payments at the BBC Sunday
picnic.  All checks and monies collected thru at least this past Sunday
will be deposited this week by the BBC treasurer.  To date,
30 out of 44 pledges have been paid in advance to BBC,
representing 75% of the total projected expenses for the 
publication.  Several contributors have sent checks in greater
amounts than their original pledges.

Searches have continued for several days, attempting to locate
all historically important photos which are known to be needed
for the publication.  Several have been located.  Very few are
outstanding.  Some may be lost.

We have begun the process of making a punch list which
will be finalized Saturday and will hopefully expedite the progress
towards the printer deadline.

Mike Poe is working day and night, as time allows, putting the 
finishing touches on every graphical aspect of the book.  The
concepts and design criteria are nearly 99 percent finished.
Mike is under an enormous work load with this book and spent
a huge number of hours pouring over unbelievable details.  In
many cases, design concepts and layouts have been in multiple
layouts for the publication committee to pour over, discuss and
make final recommendations for change or decide the direction
we will go.  If we have to extend a printing deadline, it will not
be Mike's fault.  He is doing everything anyone can
expect and a lot more than that. But he works with a committee
and so that tells you a lot about how the cadence is set.

It helps enormously that the author, Rick Knight, has final veto
and decision powers on every detail of the book down to the
last punctuation and until we turn the lights out on this project
and finally leave to get some rest.  It is 5 a.m. and some of us
have not slept at all this night.

Michele Sparks has become a valuable support person, providing
swift and decisive pursuit of details and problem solving in several 
directions of the process.  Her calm focus and surprising dedication 
to this project has been surprising and appreciated.

This is the fifth such book published by the Bristol Bird Club during
nearly two decades.  We are getting a little better at the
hang of all this.  The learning curve and self-imposed
expectations take us to an ever steeper learning curve because
the swift rush of new technology creates constant challenges into
unknown and uncharted processes and possibilities.

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