During my undergraduate science courses, students were constantly reminded to be specific in their lab notebooks to the point that someone else could read the notebook years later and be capable of replicating the experiment. As I work on digitizing and transcribing the Beatty Collection I get to chuckle at some of the descriptions of localities.

In the collage of pictures above (specifically the top left picture), the descriptor of the location the damselfly was caught at is “Creek on Mary Shannon’s place”. Being that this damselfly was caught in 1941, we the researchers at Frost, might be hard-pressed to find both Mary Shannon of Dallas, Texas and the exact creek in question (as I show in my humorously futile Google Maps search in the top right). Just as well, it also may be difficult in 2016 to find “Miss Dunn’s” property in Port Arthur Texas of 1938 (bottom picture).

I have also become a fantastic cursive reader during my time at the Frost. My teachers in the 2^nd grade were not lying! Knowing cursive is useful! In the second collage of pictures above I showcase a few of the specimen envelopes that might have stumped me at the beginning of my time working here.  The second line in the top picture may appear difficult at first. With patience and time however, I uncovered that the locality of this damselfly was the Bonaventure River in Quebec, Canada. Do you easily see that in the second line? At this point in my blog post I would like to give a shout-out to Google and their search algorithm that gives me a lead even with my egregious misspellings. How about the bottom picture? Do you get, “Gravel pit, West Lafayette, Tippercanoe County, Ind.”? If not, no worries!

The Beatty Collection is full of fun challenges like these and I like waking up, going to work, and not knowing what I will uncover!