Magpie Alert Excitement

We recently included a short booklist in the September issue of Wingspan, Birds Australia's full-colour, quarterly membership magazine. As part of this promotion we are offering a free copy of Magpie alert: learning to live with a wild neighbour by Darryl Jones with every order from this insert. This book offers a comprehensive guide to the Australian magpie and has been very well received by customers, as can be seen from the following email received from Helen. For more information on Magpie Alert click here. To view the insert included in the September issue of Wingspan click here.

Hi there, Jane and others at AINHB,
I was thrilled to get my free and totally unexpected copy of 'Magpie Alert'!
Although I had seen it in your list, and LOVE to watch magpies, I didn't think the book would interest me. Well, how wrong can you be? No book ever answers all your questions I suppose, but it was fascinating to learn that females whose partners had been translocated were joined so quickly by a new male, and to find out about the specialist cyclist/postie/pedestrian magpies, the safe distances from the nesting tree and, and, and .
Thanks again, it was a lovely gift. I'm now devouring my equally exciting pigeon book. Helen

WINNERS OF OUR KEYWORD SEARCH FEEDBACK COMPETITION

In response to our recent offer of a gift voucher for useful feedback on our new Keyword Search we received some excellent feedback and suggestions. We would like to thank everyone who responded and congratulate Robert Henzell and Carlos Ramirez Cruz, the winners of our competition. Each has been awarded a $100 gift voucher. Their feedback was particularly useful and relevant, some of which has already been acted upon, and can be read below.

Hello Andrew Isles

After trailing your new keyword search tool, I have two suggestions for improvement:

1) alphabetize keywords beginning with the same letter (eg, "R") vertically rather than horizontally. It is easier for the human eye (at least my eye!) to scan for the second and third letters of the keywords vertically down the column to find the ones sought than it is to stop briefly at each keyword and assimilate it to see if is the one being looked for before moving on horizontally (or in a zig zag fashion) to the next one.

2) in a search with multiple keywords, provide a facility to selectively remove one or more of them and add another one instead without having to clear them all and start the search again. For example, in a search with two keywords, after a search with Evolution + China I tried to go back to the screen that displayed the first one only (Evolution) and then to add a different second term (eg, Japan), but the search facility insisted on adding China as well as Japan. It seems all previously used words are included until you start a new keyword search.

Cheers
Robert

Hi,

A half price sale is definitely a good way to catch my attention. I clicked on the link and read the explanation of how your new keywordsystem works.

It wasn't immediately intuitive but I figured it out within a minute. For a second or two, while I was reading the e-mail, I thought that I was supposed to enter the letter "H" into the search text box (on the left), and then the letter "A", and so on.

When I saw that there were actual letters to click on I clicked on them and it took a second or two to realize that when I clicked on a keyword it was then displayed above the letters.

After I selected "Half-price" and then "Australia" I planned to enter"orchid" into the search box (on the left) and then hit the "Go" button. Then I thought I'd check to see if you listed "orchid" as a keyword, which you did. So I added "orchid" and did the search. If I had entered "orchid" into the search box on the left it would have started a new search for orchids.

Now that I know how the system works, which wasn't that difficult to figure out, it will be fairly easy and efficient to utilize in the future. Clicking on tags is less work than typing in search terms.

That being said, based on current trends in keyword tagging, it's probably more intuitive if keywords are displayed with each item and if each keyword is hyperlinked to return all the search results for that keyword. An inherent problem with any kind of search is that often times people don't know which keyword is the best to use when looking for something.

Displaying all associated keywords directly underneath an item is a good way to offer hints that will possibly "hook" users into clicking on keywords that 1. more aptly describes what they are looking for and 2. they hadn't thought of but are interested in, thus increasing the chances they will explore more and hence, purchase more items, in this case, books.

The trick is to allow the user to narrow their results by clicking on the keywords displayed underneath the book. This isn't the easiest thing to do but can be accomplished by including a "Search within results" checkbox. On the user side it's fairly straightforward...when they check that box any keyword they click on is added to their search, when they uncheck that box any keyword they click starts an entire new search.

So let's say I did a search for "orchids" and there were many results. I could check the "Search within results" checkbox and scroll downlooking at the results and associated keywords. If a term like"Australia" caught my eye then I could click on it and the results would be filtered to only include books with the keywords "orchids" and"Australia".

On the programming side, it can be accomplished using Javascript, AJAX and session variables. It's not the easiest programming but it shouldn't be much of a challenge to a seasoned programmer. Although, hyperlinking keywords is pretty easy. For the book table you just add a field called "Keywords" and separate the keywords by commas. When you display the page you just use a function that splits the string on the commas, places them in an array and adds the appropriate URL and hyperlink html to each keyword.

Another benefit of this system is that it's conducive to google indexing and capturing google search terms. Google finds new pages to index based on links. When you add keywords (hyperlinked) to a book, Google immediately adds all the content and links on that page that is being linked to. Up until recently Google wasn't able to discover pages that were only available via search forms and is only just now starting to explore that possibility....http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9918022-7.html

Based on your website, even with your new keyword search function (which is still just a glorified search form) it seems most of your pages (books) are only available by using a search form, so by adding keyword links that display all the results for that keyword you are making sure that Google is easily able to find all those pages to add to its database. The keywords that are on those pages are like "hooks" that capture Google indexing robots as well as search terms that people use when conducting a search on Google.

Oh, seems like you have links to your book categories somewhere as I just did a Google search for site:andrewisles.com and found 14,800results which sounds about right.

Well, there's my feedback, hope it's helpful.

Cheers,
Carlos

Fossil fish with embryo

Last night (5th June) I watched Catalyst on the ABC. There was an excellent piece on John Long's wonderful discovery of embryonic development of Devonian Placoderms. These are a fossil fish group, long extinct, that have been shown to have embryos complete with umbilical cords. The fossil is Materpiscis (‘mother-fish’ in Latin) attenboroughi and Sir David is understandably very pleased with this honour. This fabulous discovery is part of the Gogo deposit in the Kimberly and was recently published in Nature. If you want to read more I highly recommend John's book Swimming in stone: the amazing Gogo fossils of the Kimberley. Fremantle: 2006.

Andrew Isles

FEATHERED DINOSAURS...A word from the artist..

So...why do another book on feathers and dinosaurs when there already seems to be so many ? For several reasons. Firstly, when I read 'The Jehol Biota - The Emergence of Feathered Dinosaurs, Beaked Bird and Flowering Plants' (eds Mee-mann Chang et al, Shanghai Scientific & Technological Publ. 2003), my perception of the prehistoric world was forever altered. I realised that coexistent with those lumbering megabeasts that have always enthralled us was a whole suite of previously unrepresented animals that occupied ecological niches at every level of the food chain. For the first time it was explained precisely how these smaller predatory dinosaurs were able to maintain their position in this heirarchy - they had insulation.

And then I realised that the majority of these creatures - new to science as they were - had not yet been accurately depicted. With this realisation, another reason emerged - the passion of my youth was rekindled. I was, like many other children, one of those besotted by the almost fantasy world of the dinosaur - to such a degree that this passion sparked my early career in palaeontological reconstruction.

The chance to revisit that world of my childhood, but armed now with the disciplines of research and illustration, was one I simply could not let pass. Many of the paintings within the book required exhaustive research which foremost involved comparing the morphology of creatures from past to present. Similar considerations were also given to habitat and behaviour. To be able to collaborate in these matters with such an acclaimed author and palaeontologist as Dr. John Long was a fantastic opportunity.

I could, of course, have painted all of these animals in a conservative and composed manner, but that child still inside of me demanded some flesh-tearing drama too!

The final result is therefore a very different book to anything that has preceded it. I trust you will receive as much enjoyment from viewing these images as I received in painting them.

Peter Schouten
May 2008

Review of Feathered Dinosaurs

Last week Peter Schouten and John Long generously made the time to come to the shop to sign copies of their handsome new book Feathered dinosaurs. We have also taken delivery of the original artwork and one day plan to sell it for Peter. They are very handsome and unusual pictures. We obviously handle and see a lot of books but I can truthfully say that the design and oblong format of this book works very well. The plates and text are well presented. I am no palaeontologist but the text is readable and scientific. John Long has a serious reputation with a string of important discoveries. For those interested in wildlife art Peter Schouten is well known for his many projects with Tim Flannery (Tim and John are cousins). His Gap in Nature paintings were widely exhibited and very popular when put up for sale. It is fair to say that palaeontology as a scientific discipline and an amateur pursuit is growing and this is reflected in the high standard of technical and semi-technical books. For more details of the book click here.

Andrew Isles

Heart of the Dragon

The first episode of Wild China that aired last night on ABC 1 was fantastic. Visually stunning, the show offered a unique look at both the wild animals found in the south of China and the symbiotic relationship they share with the humans living there. The episode also included remarkable footage of Rickett's mouse-eared bat's fishing at night, the first to ever be filmed. Last night's episode was a very promising start to the series and we recommened you tune in next Sunday.

Wild China airing on ABC TV

Wild China, a new six-part series from the BBC, will air on Sunday nights at 7.30pm on the ABC from this weekend, Sunday the 18th of May. Using high-definition cameras, this series captures the diversity and mystery of a most enigmatic of countries, China, to reveal a land of astonishing complexity. The first episode, screening this Sunday, Heart Of The Dragon takes viewers to the steep hills and rice paddies of Southern China. For more information visit the ABC Website or for full details on the series, its filming and more visit the Wild China homepage on the BBC Website. The book that accompanies this series will not be released in Australia until August this year, however we are taking pre-arrival orders now. Full details of the book can be found here.

Welcome to our new blog

Welcome to our first blog. Our intentions with this site are to provide interesting snippets relating to books, conferences, wildlife documentaries, zoological and botanical gossip and so on. We hope to twist the collective arms of various natural history luminaries and get them to make the occasional contribution. Please visit regularly and help us with the content. Any suggestions are welcome.

We are Australia's largest natural history specialist bookshop dealing in new, secondhand and fine antiquarian books, paintings and original artwork. We have large stocks of books on birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates, botany, ecology, palaeontology, insects, marine, biology, aviculture, fossils, entomology and conservation. Australian bird books are our specialty. We stock field guides for Australia, America, Britain, Africa, Europe and Asia. Our wildlife art gallery includes original paintings by Neville Cayley, Bill Cooper and Peter Schouten.

Andrew