Having a clear idea of what the field guide is supposed to achieve will make producing the book much simpler, and will help in deciding how to apply the following principles and processes.
PRINCIPLES
Scientific accuracy
An accurate guide is one that contains correct information, including information on the characteristics and names of the plants, as well as supplementary information about their uses, ecology, cultivation and features of interest. Accuracy is achieved through sound research and information-gathering from reliable sources, and from careful production and cross-checking, avoiding mistakes in, for example, labelling pictures or spelling scientific names. Users of the guide can be reassured about the guide’s accuracy by having sources and research procedures clearly identified.
There are different approaches to ensuring accuracy. In the case of scientific names, a standardized international procedure exists for linking plant specimens to their unique scientific name (see Chapter 4). Information about the uses, ecology and other qualities of the plant may come from books, the internet or notes found on herbarium specimens; in all of these cases, sources should be cited. Alternatively, new information from knowledgeable local people may be gathered, in which case it is important to use social science methods in order to ensure reliability (see Chapter 7).
Accuracy is time consuming and costly, involving hours of research and expertise. As a result, it is important to consider just how accurate you need to be and this depends upon the purpose of the guide. Cases where accurate identification is essential include medicinal plant guides and manuals for ecological monitoring where indicator species might affect conservation planning. These cases require the attention of botanical experts (see Chapters 4, 5 and 6). Cases where accuracy is less important might include guides for tourists who are interested in learning more about a species but where identification does not involve important conservation or scientific decisions. In such cases, there is less need to consult experts about the botanical identity of the guide’s plants.
Relevance
The guide is only likely to be effective if it meets the needs of its readers and is relevant to their lives, jobs or hobbies. This is why it is so important to consult with the guide’s users, or to have a good understanding of their needs, before engaging in the project in order to ensure that the following choices are relevant:
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species included in the guide;
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level of taxonomic detail;
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relevant linked information (such as uses, cultivation methods and traditional knowledge).
Producing a successful guide 13
Consultation will ensure that the right species are included in the guide and that descriptions of the plants, and their ecology and uses, are targeted appropriately to the level of the reader. While missing information can discourage people from using a guide, too much detail or irrelevant information can make the guide unwieldy and unaffordable.
Chapter 3 discusses the consultation processes, and Chapter 9 explains how to check the guide’s relevance by testing drafts with the target audience.
Availability
A guide also needs to be easily available to the people who want to use it. Factors to take into account are attractiveness (in order to gain people’s attention in the first place), distribution (to ensure that it reaches potential buyers and users) and price (see Chapters 3 and 10). Involving potential users at an early stage in the project will provide a good indication of what people are prepared to pay for a guide that is relevant to their lives. In some cases, having a guide may be extremely important to a community who cannot afford to pay for it. In this case, it may be necessary to find funding that enables guides to be provided free.
Usability
The concept of ‘usability’ – which has been particularly developed for websites (Bevan, 1997) – refers to those qualities that a publication needs in order for users to benefit most from the guide. The criteria for usability are:
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effectiveness – meeting the goals of the user in finding the required information;
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efficiency – reducing the time and effort needed to find that information;
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satisfaction – enjoyment from using the guide.
In practice, this means ensuring that readers can find their way around the contents, understand the pictures and symbols, comprehend the terminology, feel confident that the information they find is correct, and use the guide under field conditions, which may include carrying it all day in the rain.
In order to achieve usability, therefore, it is important to identify the guide’s potential users (see the section below on ‘People’ and Chapter 3) and to test the guide rigorously (see Chapter 9). In particular, the authors will need to consider the following:
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Why do the users want a guide and how and where do they want to use it? If they want to take a guide into the field with them, then it must be small enough to carry and robust enough to be used many times in conditions where it may become wet and dirty. If the guide is for use in a school or community centre, then it needs to be durable enough to withstand usage by many different people.
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What kind of presentation (verbal and visual) is needed to enable readers to find what they need? This includes considering three common aspects of a guide: the language which is used, the way in which it is illustrated, and the kinds of systems provided to enable users to find their way around the guide (for example, keys, indexes and contents pages).
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There are two issues to consider in relation to users’ language needs. First, are readers happy for material to be in their national or official language, or is it of real
14 Plant Identification
importance to them that it is in their local language? Second, to what extent is scientific language understood? There is little point in producing a guide using language suited to a fully trained scientist if it is not understood by the guide’s readers (see Chapter 7).
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Levels of scientific knowledge and ease of use of scientific language also affect the way in which users prefer the information to be organized on the page and within the guide as a whole. Unless these preferences are known, it is difficult to make decisions about the order in which species are presented, the kinds of botanical keys to include, and the layout and level of detail of contents pages and indexes so that users can search the guide to find the information they need.
It is commonly said that a picture is worth a thousand words. However, it has to be remembered that pictorial recognition is complex, as is the use of symbols. Use of inaccurate colour; different scaling systems; showing parts rather than the whole; or diagrammatic representations rather than realistic images, and universal rather than local symbolic systems, all have an effect on the recognition and use of illustrations.
Finding out what kinds of illustrations people prefer and can use, and the kinds of symbols that they understand, is a necessary part of the process of comprehending users’
needs. Different types of illustrations and symbols for different groups may be required.
And, as emphasized in Chapter 9, the results must be tested thoroughly in order to ensure that the target audience really does understand the guide’s content.
PEOPLE
A decision to produce a guide may be taken by a variety of people. It may be the personal brainwave of one dedicated person; the result of a community discussion about loss of traditional knowledge; a requirement from donors in order to make a scientific project more community oriented; a suggestion from the tourist authority, responding to demand from tourists; or a project proposed by a non-governmental organization (NGO) to help a group of women in a village pass on their knowledge to their children.
Most often, the idea comes from scientists who want to make their knowledge more accessible to other users and need to
develop novel ways of doing that.
Whoever has the original idea, it is unlikely that the guide will be produced by them alone. Often, many people are involved, such as the authors or producers of the guide, and those who can supply information. Perhaps even more important, however, are the potential users. Surprisingly, they are often forgotten during the production process.
However, if they are not involved in all stages of producing the guide, the end result is unlikely to satisfy their needs. Their involvement is essential in order to:
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ensure the relevance of the objectives and support for the project;
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test assumptions that this is the type of guide that is needed;
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identify existing relevant information; and
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test comprehension and usability of the various parts of the guide.
Sometimes the potential users are also the people who are providing the information or even writing the guide – although this is not common. It is important to establish who all
Producing a successful guide 15
the different people involved in the project are and to clearly define individual roles before embarking on production.
When trying to work out who should be involved in producing a guide, it can be useful to think in terms of stakeholders. Stakeholders are those individuals, groups or organizations who have an interest in a project – in this case, in the production of a guide. Chapter 3 provides more detail about identifying and involving stakeholders.
Stakeholder involvement helps to ensure that the guide is what the proposed users want, and that significant groups all feel proud of their achievement and help to promote the guide. Involving all stakeholder groups can become complicated: in Bahia, northeast Brazil, the NGOs and universities who were collaborating to produce two guides to forage legumes found themselves in a seemingly ever-expanding team of biologists, community extension workers, design experts and assistants. While this brought stimulating new ideas, it risked delays in publication. Management and diplomacy skills may therefore also be required in order to stay focused on the main objectives. Chapter 3 discusses these aspects in more detail.
There are several different approaches to involving potential users and other stakeholders in the production and design of a guide. The three most important are consultative, collaborative and participatory approaches:
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In a consultative process, authors will ask other stakeholders (especially a guide’s users) for their opinions and preferences, which they will then take into account in writing the guide so that it is well suited to the needs of the target audience and therefore more likely to be used by them.
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In a collaborative process, different stakeholders will work together in order to produce the guide, perhaps in a multi-disciplinary team.
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In a participatory process, power and responsibility will be shared by authors, producers, users, sources of information, etc., and decisions will be taken together.
Work may even be led by the potential users, as in the case where a community has chosen to produce a guide in order to protect or preserve its own knowledge.
Each process is valid within a particular context, depending upon:
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what the authors and other stakeholders want;
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how much time each has for participating; and
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how much capability they have in assembling and presenting the necessary information.
PROCESS
No matter who has made the initial decision to produce a guide, if it is to be successful, a logical process is required to ensure that all of the principles mentioned above are taken into account (see Figure 2.1). This process begins with planning and consultation, leading to the design of the various components. The ‘design’ of the guide refers to the way in which the information is put together and presented: what is the shape and size of the book; what type of paper is used; how is the book bound; what will be on the cover; how are the pages laid out; what size of illustrations should be used; and should
16 Plant Identification
Source: Anna Lawrence
Figure 2.1 The process of producing a field guide there be some symbols on the page to help users find their way around? As explained in Chapter 3, this is often best planned by leafing through a sample of existing field guides to stimulate ideas and seek reactions to particular designs. Each of these must be carefully costed and staff needs assessed (see Chapter 3).
Producing a successful guide 17
Once an affordable plan is agreed by all stakeholders, each component (botanical content, text, illustrations and keys, or other access systems) must be researched in detail (Chapters 4–6 explain botanical aspects of a guide, while Chapter 7 deals with social research and writing; Chapter 8 describes the use of illustrations). All elements of the guide must then be tested for accuracy and accessibility before being revised and compiled into a first draft, which is again assessed before publication (see Chapter 9).
The only way to ensure that a guide is usable is to test it thoroughly with representatives of potential users.
Both usability and information quality must be checked with users and contributors to the guide. It is unfortunate that many otherwise beautifully produced field guides, resulting from much hard work and investment, are not popular because readers cannot understand how to use the key, or find a mistake in the information given for one plant, and therefore distrust the rest of the information provided in the book. Good consultation at the outset should help to get things right; but there will always be unexpected details that need to be corrected. Do not wait to test the whole guide; test parts of the book as they are written and illustrated. Show descriptions to the kinds of people who may use the guide; ask them if they understand and if they think the information is correct; ask for their comments on how to improve the guide. Check whether people can recognize the species illustrated in the drawings or photos.
The penultimate step in the process is dissemination – ensuring that the guide reaches the people intended to use it. This may involve publication; advertising and distribution through networks of contacts; training; or holding a conference to launch the guide. Whatever method seems appropriate will again depend upon the target audience, the social context of the project and the information systems that the target audience uses. Ways of achieving this are explained in Chapter 10.
Finally, if you can find out how your guide has been used and what its impact has been this can provide useful information for people producing guides in the future. It can also help to identify any necessary changes for reprints. Some guidelines for evaluating field guides are given in Chapter 10.
BOX 2.1 ADAPTING PRODUCT TO PURPOSE AND PEOPLE:
SOME EXAMPLES OF THE PRINCIPLES IN ACTION
This box presents four examples of field guides from Brazil, produced for a range of users and purposes. All of them followed broadly the process outlined earlier, and each has strengths in particular principles of guide production. Together, they respond to a range of needs, from highly technical to motivational.
Flora da Reserva Ducke (Ribeiro et al, 1999)
The most botanical of the four guides, this is a 799-page guide to 2250 plant species found in a 10 square kilometre non-flooded reserve in the Amazon forest. It relies on vegetative characters for identification, avoiding the traditional dependence on flowers and fruits, which according to the authors are only visible on 15 per cent of Amazonian species at any given time. Its publication in 1999 raised enormous interest, particularly among botanists, although it is intended for the ‘non-botanical public’. The work, by 60 botanists over five years, is the only guide of its kind in the Amazon and has been bought by biologists
18 Plant Identification
thousands of kilometres from the reserve, where many of the same species occur; identification to genus l
evel in the guide is invaluable. Another important factor is language – it is published in Portuguese, making it accessible to most native botanists of Latin America (botanical Portuguese is largely comprehensible to Spanish speakers).
In this paragon of field guides, the book’s purpose and target audience were carefully considered, and careful use of botanical language makes it particularly accessible. In the process of preparing the guide, planning involved a lengthy search for funds. The detailed research is outstanding, as is the attention to involving relevant stakeholders. Furthermore, the innovative design ensures that an unprecedented number of species can be identified using a guide that has been designed for usability in the field.
In an interview, one author (Mike Hopkins) explained that compared with other tropical areas, the flora of the forests of the Amazon Basin is poorly known, and knowledge is limited by few collections. Furthermore, the distribution of the collections is extremely biased, concentrated close to urban centres and, only secondarily, along the rivers and roads. Large areas of the Amazon Basin remain botanically unknown. The prospect of having a reasonable knowledge of the size and composition of the regional flora remains distant; so the Reserva Ducke – a 10 square kilometre block of non-flooded rainforest situated on the outskirts of Manaus, Brazil – was chosen as the site for a local flora precisely because it is situated in an area with a high collection density, and it was assumed to be relatively well collected.
The initial idea was to provide a means for the ‘ordinary’ biologist to accurately identify plants in the field without having to be familiar with a vast specialized vocabulary.
Taxonomic botanists rely heavily on fertile material to both describe species and identify plant specimens, and botanical keys typically concentrate on flower and fruit characters.
Generally, in tropical forests only a small proportion of the flora is fertile at any time, and many species flower only once every several years. Identification of sterile specimens (collected without flowers or fruit) is particularly difficult, and less confidence can be placed in the identifications. The authors therefore felt that a guide catering to both immediate and accurate identification of flora would be a major contribution to Amazonian botany, and the original concept of the field guide was expanded to include the species of the entire flora, based exclusively on field characters.
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