CRYPTOZOOLOGY ARCHIVES
I place the origin of this project back to my senior year in high school (1997). I did a paper on the Loch Ness Monster and needed more material than what was available at the small school library and the small public library. I got a few articles and the books Enigma of Loch Ness by Henry Bauer and Loch Ness Monster by Tim Dinsdale through Interlibrary Loan. After reading them I wanted to photocopy the entire books just so I could have a copy . I ended up mainly copying the bibliographies and any other resource pages that I could use as for future reference and additional research.
When I started college at the University of North Dakota, my first job was the Chester Fritz Library in the Periodicals Department. I soon began searching through the New York Times and Times (London) on microfilm, tracking down articles on the Loch Ness Monster. My research soon expanded when I came across a copy of In the Wake of the Sea Serpent by Bernard Heuvelmans in the Geology library (I think I was the only one to ever check it out in the 5 years I was at UND) and I began utilizing the Interlibrary Loan service for more articles and books.
The next development for the project came in the form an annotated bibliography for one of my classes. This motivated me to really want to do something with all the research I had been doing. My first thought was to submit the bibliography to a magazine like Fate, Strange Magazine, or Fortean Times (which I did for my class, I sent the idea to Fortean Times but I didn't get a response).
The next stage involved Graduate School at the Univesity of North Texas(2003). I was opened up to a new vast array of resources and researching tools. In one of my classes I created the first website version of my bibliography. Then for my Capstone (final project), I created the Cryptozoology Archives, which included the articles from the 1800s.
This brings us to today. I've been scanning and adding all the articles that I have tracked down in my research using a multitude of bibliographies from Bernard Heuvelmans, Loren Coleman, George Eberhart, Henry Bauer, and many others. The services of the local libraries have been a tremendous help in this endeavour, which I will be forever grateful.