Richmond Index -- GENERA (Under development)

• Indices to the Genus group card images A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
• Alphabetical listing of all Genus group card images (large file -- 15,251 links 1.5 Meg) A-Z

The essential resource here is The Richmond Index which is the property of the Division of Birds at the National Museum of Natural History, Washingtion, D.C.

Notes:

1. How to cite these images?
   My current suggestion is to cite this as "Images of the cards in the Richmond Index, Bird Division, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. accessed via http://www.zoonomen.net [Date]."
   Copies of the images themselves would be the best documentation of a particular point. This portion of the web site and these link-lists are designed to provide access to the images of the cards in the Richmond Index itself.

	

The Richmond Index is an alphabetically-arranged 3x5 card Index in the
Division of Birds at the National Museum of Natural History.

There are two sections: a Genus group name index, and an index
of infrageneric names. This section is intended to help with an 
undestanding of the genus-group name portion of the Index.

The Index was initiated by Charles W. Richmond who was its
primary compiler. Richmond was a member of the Bird Division and worked on the Index
from 1889 (when he was was 21) till his death in 1932. Since then, work on the Index 
has continued, at least into the 1990's. Cards have been added as recently as this year (2007).

The cards are arranged predominantly by alphabetical order. The order in which the images
are listed reflects, as much as possible, the physical order the cards were in
at the time the material was scanned. When more than one name is primarily
referenced on the cards, I try to have multiple individual named links that will all
link to the one card containing that name.
Departures from the purely alphabetical scheme usually result either from multiple names
listed on a single card or from the association of similarly
spelled names for example: 
# Aepyornis Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,I 1851
# Epiornis Bianconi 1865

A few irregularities appear to result from mis-filing of the cards.

Varying amounts of information are present on the cards; in their
fullest form they include the name, authority, full bibliographic citation, and
additional details. Many include information relating to derivation of the names,
types, type localities, and even full original descriptions.

It must be emphasized that Richmond was particularly careful and
knowledgable with regard to publishing/bibliographic details (dates of publication,
status of authorship &c.) and while Richmond is not always right, his work
is a more consistent and dependable than can be found anywhere else in
the ornithological literature.

The Genus name portion of the Index contains slightly less than 14,000
cards.  For comparison, Neave's Nomenclator Zoologicus contains somewhat
less than 12,900 Avian genus group names, and Sherborn's Index Animalium
(which of course stops at 1850) contains only 3138 avian generic names.

2. Preliminary scans 2007.10.11-19
3. The sequence here largely reflects the sequence of cards as encountered, and thus there may be irregularities of sequence, and neighboring cards should be examined.
4. Some scans may be incomplete (but most should be interpretable).
5. Some material required "flat-bed" scanning and will be included progressively; (material that does not result from the initial scan will have a suffix other than "A" or "a" in the image file name). The current list should not be considered to be complete, but it is very nearly so.
6. The support of the Bird Division, as well as the contributions and hard work by Missy Peterson, Laurel Peterson, Mercedes Foster, Roy McDiarmid, T. Chad Walter, Fiona Wilkinson, and Craig Ludwig were essential.
7. The Bird Division is in no way responsible for the deficiencies seen here (incomplete scans, or problems with the organization and presentation of the material).