In a new partnership, Bookchurch.org donated a collection of 60x books including bird guides, species guides, and regional ornithology titles to the largest egg museum in North America, the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology.
“Through our ongoing donation efforts, we collected and separated several boxes of bird guides, reference materials, and out-of-print titles specifically related to ornithology. Due to a personal interest in birds and nature, and having previously toured the Western Foundation, it was an obvious choice of who to contact,” said Executive Director, Louis Torres.
“The Western Foundation is devoted to preserving information and materials specifically related to birds, pairing perfectly with our mission to save books for direct-donation purposes,” Louis continued. “It actually helps our operations to have organizations that are focused on a unique genre or theme, (like the Western Foundation, Apples-to-Zucchini Cooking School, the Wilderness Youth Foundation, etc.) as we can set aside these resources, removing any questions while sorting, such as ‘where should/could these books go to find value?”
With the largest collection of nests in the world, and an egg collection rivaled only by the British Museum of Natural History, the Western Foundation holds more than 400 different collections which have been incorporated into its holdings. This leaves the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology with a staggering array of more than 250,000 sets of eggs, 18,000 nests, and 56,000 bird study skins, along with the corresponding data.
Dr. Linnea Hall is the Director of the Western Foundation. She stopped by the soon to open, Lantern Tree Books, in Carpinteria, CA to pick up the book donations. Her plan is to use them as a resource for both the museum staff and interns in their research to learn more about birds both inside and outside California.
Dr. Hall also mentioned that bird guides and professional material were not often available at most bookstores in the area. Lantern Tree Books plans to have plenty nature based guides on-hand as well as the ability to special order content for all your birding and biological needs.