Curators

ZipcodeZoo.com is looking for Curators to improve the quality of our information.

Curators are content specialists who work to improve the value of an institution's collections. ZipcodeZoo Curators are professional or advanced amateur biologists with specialized knowledge of a taxonomic group at the family level or below. Curators choose the taxonomic group that they will be responsible for. ZipcodeZoo's Curator program provides an opportunity for our users to share their knowledge of a taxonomic group with the rest of the world. A Curator's duties may include:

• Identify sources of photos, sounds, video for species within their taxonomic group, and perhaps upload some (using the Upload an Image link at the bottom of each critter page);
• Review ZipcodeZoo for completeness (eg., missing species or insufficient narrative about a species in the taxon). You may edit those pages you curate with the "Edit this Page" link at the bottom of each species' page.
• Review ZipcodeZoo for accuracy (eg., misspelled species names or incorrect claims about taxonomy at and below this level);
• Contribute to the Critter ID Forum when a photo belonging to their taxonomic group is submitted for identification.

Benefits of Being a Curator

Curators are not paid. ZipcodeZoo.com is a not-for-profit educational organization, which moves forward on the shoulders of volunteers and donations. But we can offer some other benefits:

• Curators will have biographical sketches posted on their own Curator Contact Page, like this.
• The Curator's name will appear on all pages they curate, with a link to their Curator Contact Page, like this.

Qualifications

A good Curator will make ZipcodeZoo more worth visiting, whether it is by improving our comprehensiveness, correcting some of our errors, adding to our visual interest with images or sounds, or improving our readability.

To be useful to ZipcodeZoo and our users, you only need know enough to find errors. If you can put in a little time to improve our "diamond in the rough", then you will benefit us all, including the millions who visit this site.

If you think you can help, please send a statement of interest, brief biographical sketch, and the taxonomic group you wish to curate to David Stang.