David Sibley has an excellent reputation as a birder, naturalist and painter of nature subjects. His tree guide follows the format of his very successful bird guides so the general organization and presentation is very good. His experience authoring bird guides as served him well in creating his tree guide. I'd guess that Sibley's tree and forest knowledge is very good for his local area, eastern Massachusetts, I'm sure any ENTS member would enjoy being in the woods with him.
I think that it is a mistake for the ENTS to think that we are have sufficient visibility or credibility in the general natural history and science community as a result of publishing high quality data on the web or in scientific papers. I'm sure Bob, Will, Lee and others know that it is an uphill battle to spread the word. Even in my local community of naturalists, it is difficult to get people excited about the idea of obtaining the most accurate tree measurements. Sibley's talent and skill is as a naturalist, illustrator and creator of reference guides, he is not a quantitative dendrologist. Looking at the book from that perspective I'm guessing that Sibley just wasn't focusing on that aspect and accepted the long-standing, widely published information. Perhaps reflecting the difficulty in authoring such a labor intensive (painting all the illustrations), some areas are going to get less attention. I really think the fault should be shared with the publisher. Any author of a reference guide has their work fact checked before publication. Whoever was performing the fact checking role for the publisher should have picked up the ENTS on their radar and at least raised some questions. Sibley's very popular guide books typically go through multiple editions. I think it would make sense for the ENTS to contact David and suggest that there is newer more accurate data available. If a convincing case is made it's possible that corrections would be made for the next edition. I think it would be a mistake to take the attack route and miss the opportunity to collaborate. All that said I think it's very important for the ENTS to do a careful critical analysis of the guide, that is the best way to get started on getting it corrected. -Andrew [email protected] wrote: > Steve, > > Great. It is a physically attractive guide. I'm laying out my many > tree guides as I write this to do the relative comparison. > > Will's point about Sibley not contacting us and going with the usual > sources that include extreme errors is curious. I'm sure others will > weigh in with comments on this point. It isn't the least debatable > that Sibley's data are drawn from sources that contain big errors. The > question is how accountable should he be when most other tree guides > do the same. > > Bob > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Steve Galehouse" <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 9:51:05 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern > Subject: Re: [ENTS] Sibley's new tree guide > > Bob- > > I saw this book at Costco, about a month ago, for $29, and I wish I > had purchased it then--out of stock now. Paging through the book for > just a couple of minutes, I was impressed. The best price I've found > online is $24.46 plus $3.99 shipping. The pre-printed price on the > jacket is $39.95. I'll get a copy this week from somewhere to give it > a better look. > > Steve > > On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 7:58 AM, <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > Barry, > > It just came out. Copyright 2009. > > All ENTS, > > I've been asked by Ryan McEwan (that's Dr. McEwan from Dayton > University) to write a book review for the Journal of the Torrey > Botanical Society - a most honorable, prestigious society. The > Society dates back to around around 1867, I think and is usually > considered to be the oldest botanical society in America. It was > created by John Torrey of Columbia University. I regard the > invitation to write the review as a singular highest honor. > > Comments by the rest of you are most welcome. Ed, you are a > veritable idea mill. Steve, you are a botanical encyclopedia. Lee, > you are the chief scientist. Gary, you are a combination all the > above. > > I'm presently planning to evaluate the book on two scales or levels: > > 1. relative to other tree guides, and > > 2. on its merits without reference to other guides - an absolute scale > > As a first first crack, I've composed the following evaluation matrix. > > *Category** * *Relative Grade* * **Absolute ** **Grade* > > Physical size of book > > > Organization > > > > General plant nomenclature > > > Choice of species > > > > Species description > > > > Drawings > > > > Leaf > > Bark > > Tree profile > > Flowers and fruits > > Range maps > > > > Tree dimensional information > > > > > All and all ideas/suggestions are welcome. > > Bob > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Barry Caselli" <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> > To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 7:01:29 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada > Eastern > Subject: Re: [ENTS] Sibley's new tree guide > > I've never heard of this book, actually. > > --- On *Thu, 12/17/09, [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> /<[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>>/* wrote: > > > From: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > Subject: [ENTS] Sibley's new tree guide > To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Date: Thursday, December 17, 2009, 2:21 PM > > ENTS, > > I just got The Sibley Guide to Trees that everybody has been > raving about. My initial impression is that parts of it are > good and parts are definitely not. Here is my first grading pass. > > Species Coverage: Okay for my purposes. Others Ents like Steve > Galehouse are much better judges of coverage. I give an A-. > > Leaf Drawings: So far, I think pretty good. I give an A-. > > Flowers and Fruits: Okay. I give a B. > > Trunk and Bark: Not so good. I give a C+ > > Tree Profiles: Not good. Erratic coverage. I give a D+ > > Range Maps: Thumbnail presentations: I give a C- > > Dimension Data: I didn't expect the tree dimension information > to be good. Apparently Sibley didn't have a clue as to which > sources of information are reliable and which ones aren't. I > think he pulled most of his numbers from the National Register > of Big Trees plus miscellaneous sources. He obviously didn't > do much serious research, so on tree dimensions he earns an F. > > Organization and Layout: Attractive. I give a B+ > > Well that's it for now. I don't minimize the mountain of work > required to produce such an identification guide. Has the > guide raised any bars? No, not from what I'm looking at. > > Bob > -- > Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org > <http://www.nativetreesociety.org/> > Send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> > Visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en > To unsubscribe send email to > [email protected] > <mailto:entstrees%[email protected]> > > -- > Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org > Send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en > To unsubscribe send email to > [email protected] > <mailto:entstrees%[email protected]> > -- > Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org > Send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en > To unsubscribe send email to > [email protected] > <mailto:entstrees%[email protected]> > > > -- > Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org > Send email to [email protected] > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en > To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] > -- > Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org > Send email to [email protected] > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en > To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] -- Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected]
