BWPi brought encyclopaedic knowledge of the Western Palearctic’s avifauna to birders’ fingertips, and the updated format may still prove useful despite the accessibility of online information.
92 : BWPi
2004
BWPi brought encyclopaedic knowledge of the Western Palearctic’s avifauna to birders’ fingertips, and the updated format may still prove useful despite the accessibility of online information.
The advent of the DVD format – originally short for digital video disk and first introduced in 1995 – represented a major step up from CD (see pages 162–163). Capable of storing far more data, one DVD could be used to record a then impressive 4.7 gigabytes in a single layer, or up to 8.5 GB with dual-layer recording. With its improved playback of moving images, higher-quality sound and better durability, it was the ideal format to replace video tape for commercial films.
Many birding videos previously released on VHS got a second lease of life on pre-recorded DVDs, known as DVD-ROMs because data could be read only and not written or erased. This included some of the titles produced by BirdGuides – including company co-founder Dave Gosney’s Finding Birds In … series – while Paul Doherty’s well-filmed Bird Images videos were also re-released as DVD-ROMs. The improved format’s interactive features also enabled much scrolling between files and cross-referencing, making each species or scene watchable in moments, rather than the time-consuming rewinding and fast-forwarding of standard video cassettes.
The pinnacle of DVD-ROM use in birding came with the 2004 publication by BirdGuides of The Birds of the Western Palearctic interactive, or BWPi. The digital version of the benchmark Oxford University Press handbook which was originally published in nine volumes over 17 years from 1977 to 1994, it was a remarkable achievement. The book itself was extraordinary enough, covering 970 species and featuring detailed text, maps and colour plates for all of those regularly recorded in the region. In its DVD reincarnation, however, the entire content of 7,045 pages was now condensed into a single disc just 12cm in diameter.
Oxford University Press had itself previously attempted to issue the magnum opus as a DVD-ROM, but the publication had been beset with technical problems. BWPi, too, had a few glitches, but the availability of such an easily searchable detailed and expansive summary of all the region’s birds more than made up for these difficulties. Version 2.0 followed just two years later, but the difficulties of keeping such a key reference updated using optical media mean that further revisions were cancelled.
Like the CDs that preceded them, DVDs were also sold as blank recordable discs and saw much use for the back-up and transfer of birders’ own photos and documents, though subsequently they have lost out to inexpensive external hard drives which are far more capacious for storage and much more practical. Cloud back-up and web file-sharing services, some of them free, have further compromised the latter-day appeal of DVDs, as have miniature but large-capacity portable USB memory sticks.
None of this stops data from being corrupted, however, and the biggest memory costs the largest amount of money for a tiny device that can be easily lost. Still, the choice of media on which to store many thousands of photographs, sounds, notes and references has never been wider, and a routine of regular back-ups should eliminate the need to worry about the long-term survival of precious data.
It seems likely that with the recent introduction of field guides as both ebooks and smartphone apps, the days of the DVD-ROM medium are numbered, but it has proved a good way of storing and retrieving masses of information in an accessible format.