The AMCS (Association for Mexican Cave Studies) is based at the Texas Speleology Center (TSC) near Driftwood, Texas (SW of Austin), but we have contributors all over. We are starting some new initiatives this year and could use some volunteer help. See the AMCS website at http://www.mexicancaves.org/
I am asking for volunteers to help me index (database) existing cave maps. Bill Mixon and Katy Arens did a great job of posting over 4000 published cave maps on the AMCS website. They are arranged by state, but until now one could not search for cavers’ names or cave areas. These maps are from many different publications, not just AMCS. I have indexed 851 cave maps in the online collection for San Luis Potosí and Tamaulipas. A test example of the html index is on my website at http://cavelife.info/ You can access this file directly at http://cavelife.info/maps03.htm The good thing about an html table is that you can search for anything in the whole table regardless of which column it’s in, or whether it’s English or Spanish. For example, using a control-f to search, you can type “sotano” and find Sótano, sótano, or sotano. If you want to find “Cañon” just type canon. It is usually best to search for a caver’s last name only, as they often have nicknames. You can find all the caves that someone mapped in that state. Clicking on the Map Link takes you directly to the pdf map on the AMCS website. Chihuahua and Durango also are done, giving us a total of 928 indexed maps. Only 3137 maps to go! Plus new ones in recent publications. This is a big job, but interesting because you get to learn about the history of cave exploration in an area as you type the cavers’ names, dates, cave areas, municipios, and year from each map. If you can volunteer at least 8 hours to this project, all you need is a computer with a fairly large monitor, a web browser, a spreadsheet program like Excel or LibreOffice Calc (free), and typing skill. Please contact me and I’ll send you a written procedure with a spreadsheet set up for a chosen state. We’d really like you to do an entire state. I’m now working on Oaxaca with 551 cave maps. Help!! *William R. (Bill) Elliott* *[email protected] <[email protected]>* 573-291-5093 cell
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