Past Meetings
The history of NORAC is fairly well summed up by the history of its meetings, outlined below in reverse chronological order.
Detailed minutes/proceedings were recorded at some of the recent NORAC meetings and are linked here in electronic format. Although these do not represent formal policy documents of NORAC they currently are the only record of discussions subsequent to the adoption of the NORAC handbook in 1990. As such they serve as a valuable resource on more recent information for anybody involved in running or planning bird atlases in North America.
2016: NORAC Workshop held in conjunction with the NAOC-VI in Washington, D.C. Proceedings.
2012: NORAC Workshop held in conjunction with the NAOC-V in Vancouver, Canada. Agenda and Proceedings.
2010: NORAC Workshop held in conjunction with the joint meeting of the American Ornithologists Union, the Cooper Ornithological Society and the Society of Canadian Ornithologists in San Diego, California. Agenda and Proceedings.
2008: NORAC Workshop held in conjunction with the joint meeting of the American Ornithologists Union, the Cooper Ornithological Society and the Society of Canadian Ornithologists in Portland, Oregon. Agenda and Proceedings.
2006: NORAC Workshop held prior to NAOC meeting in October 2006 in Veracruz, Mexico. Proceedings
2004: NORAC Workshop prior to AFO meeting in Ithaca, NY. Agenda
1999: NORAC Workshop prior to AOU at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Proceedings.
1994: NORAC Workshop at AOU in Montana. Proceedings were not published -- the Chair's luggage was lost on the return flight along with notes and tapes of the session!
1992: NORAC met in Estes Park Colorado at the Conference on the Status and Management of Neotropical Migratory Birds. A committee was appointed to give a recommendation on repeat atlases: Charles Smith, Mike Cadman, and Chan Robbins. Their later recommendation was that atlases be repeated at 20 year intervals.
1991: Breeding Bird Atlas Conference in Colorado. Held September 13-15, 1991 in Keystone Colorado; proceedings were published by the Colorado Bird Atlas, c/o the Denver Museum of Natural History.
1990: Handbook for Atlasing North American Breeding Birds published. The NORAC guidelines were compiled in this publication, edited by Charles R. Smith and published by the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, in an English and Spanish version, supported by a grant from the Merck Family Fund. An electronic version is now available here on this NORAC website
1987: Atlas Conference at the AOU meeting in San Francisco.
1986: American Breeding Bird Atlas Conference at Cornell. Organized by Sally Sutcliffe and held at the Arnot Forest, this conference brought together western and eastern atlasers and was the catalyst for the NORAC handbook.
1982: An article resulting from this conference entitled "Atlasing the distribution of the breeding birds of North America" was published by Sarah B. Laughlin, Douglas P. Kibbe, and Paul F.J. Eagles in January 1982 issue of American Birds
1981: Northeastern Breeding Bird Atlas Conference held 6, 7, & 8 November 1981 at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science in Woodstock, Vermont, with 14 states and provinces represented. Conference organized by Sally Laughlin, Chan Robbins, and Doug Kibbe. Proceedings were published by VINS.
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