Member of the Year
Doug Woods 2008
Kevin Seymour made the following remarks in presenting Doug Woods with the TOC 2008 Member of the Year Award:
Doug joined the TOC with his wife Valerie Jacobs in 2006. Early on, he was asked by then President, Bob Carswell, to take on the Warbler Survey.
Warbler Survey
Doug updated the entry sheets, thereby controlling the organization of the Survey. He created an ACCESS database to record sightings and generate tabular reports. He wrote a C language program to process the observers’ Excel spreadsheets so that the data could be loaded easily into the database, and then uploaded all 34 previous years of data. He created an extensive collection of Excel spreadsheets to create graphics from the tabular summaries produced by the database. Finally, he revamped the annual report to make it more graphics‐ and results‐oriented.
TOC Website
Also at Bob Carswell’s request, Doug took over the TOC website when it was no longer feasible for Marcel Gahbauer to continue in that role. Doug did a complete redesign and changed the site to use cascading style sheets for ease of maintenance. The site is now far more readable than it was and is easier to use and maintain. Doug added the Photo section, using the same freeware technology as the OFO website as well as Google Maps technology to implement the map section of the hotspots pages. He added many pages to the site, including the Council, Bylaws, Member of the Year, Checklist of Toronto Birds, What You Can Do to Help Save Birds and a FAQ page as well as all section introduction pages.
Greater Toronto Raptor Watch
As a result of seeing the new Warbler Survey report, Don Barnett asked Doug to take over the GTRW website from Andy Hampton. Doug completely re‐did the computer collection of data. The data for the reports are handled in the same way as the Warbler Survey data, with an ACCESS database for producing tabular summaries and a second C program to process input Excel spreadsheets. The reports make extensive use of graphics and tabular information that is also produced from the database and spreadsheets. The new website is completely redesigned and follows the same technical guidelines used by the TOC site. The new spreadsheets automatically produce properly formatted input pages for HMANA data input and Doug is currently involved in updating HMANA with all prior year’s data from the three hawk watch sites.
Other
While Doug was creating these resources for the TOC, he also worked on a database for the OBRC and completely re‐did the OFO website with Valerie Jacobs. As Doug is fond of saying, only people who have actually worked on one have any idea of how much work goes into creating and maintaining a website. And he was involved in creating and maintaining three.
Kevin presented Doug with an Open Air Books gift certificate and a framed award that says:
The Toronto Ornithological Club is pleased to award Doug Woods
MEMBER OF THE YEAR FOR 2008
Thank you for your special efforts in modernizing the Club website
and organizing the warbler count and raptor watch records.
