Submitting to The Menagerie Project

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What can I submit?

A work featured in the Menagerie Project must meet two main requirements. The first is that the work must be culturally significant. The purpose of this archive is to document our cultural heritage, so the art and literature included here should have a lasting reputation. Although there are no definitive rules for qualification, here are a few helpful guidelines:

• For visual artworks, inclusion in a reputable museum's collection (or exhibition by a reputable museum) is the most reliable criterion.
• A text (poem or book) or its author generally will have won awards, appeared in school curricula, or earned some other form of official recognition to qualify as literature deserving of preservation.
• Very recent works (i.e. from the last ten or so years) are less likely to meet these standards and should generally be avoided.
• Submission of your own work is discouraged.
• If in doubt, spend some time exploring the other works in the archive to get a feel for what fits.

The second requirement is that the work must depict or refer to a plant, animal, or other organism - more specifically a real, wild, nonhuman, intact, identifiable organism. In many cases this is an easy and obvious call; others are not so clear-cut. Here are some examples of what not to submit. (If you come across any of these in the archive, use the Report tool to flag them as inappropriate.)

• A poem about a unicorn or a phoenix (not real)
• A drawing of barnyard chickens or garden daisies (not wild)
• An excerpt describing a turkey dinner or a mink coat (not intact)
• A painting with a distant, speck-sized flying bird in the background (not identifiable)
• An excerpt with the phrase "eagle-eyed" or "sly as a fox" (cliches that don't truly engage with the organism in question)
• A description of a Chicago Bears football game (not a nonhuman organism)
• An excerpt from a textbook or encyclopedia (not literary)
• An illustration from a field guide (not artistic)

Here are some examples of content, beyond the obvious, that can and should be submitted:

• Depictions of extinct organisms (e.g. woolly mammoths in cave paintings)
• Depictions of dead organisms (e.g. pheasants killed by a hunter)
• Descriptions of wild organisms living in captivity (e.g. flamingoes in a zoo)
• References that are only identifiable with moderate specificity (e.g. "bear", "oak", "fern", "starfish"). For relatively well-known groups like birds, mammals, insects, trees, or wildflowers, ID should be possible at least to the order, family, or genus level (even if you're not personally certain of the ID). For other groups like most invertebrates or fungi, ID to the phylum or class level is acceptable.
• Abstract depictions of organisms, if it is clear (from the artwork's title or other information) what organism inspired the work.
• Metaphors or similes referring to organisms, as long as they are not cliches. (If in doubt, ask: does this reference enhance my understanding or appreciation of the organism in any way?)
• Nonfiction as well as fiction works, as long as the writing can be described as literary. (If in doubt, see the question above.)

How do I submit?

Before submitting, the first step is to make sure the plant or animal depiction or reference you have found is not already included in our archive. Use the search tools to check for the title and/or creator of the work. (If you are submitting an excerpt from a classic novel, the book may well be in the archive already but your particular excerpt may not.) If it is already in the archive but you disagree with the attached ID, you can suggest a different ID with the "Correct or refine this ID" tool; if there is an additional organism present that is not identified, you can ID it with the "Add another ID" tool.

Once you are confident your submission is new, the first step is to provide a title along with the name of an author (for literary works) or artist (for visual artworks). Make sure that what you enter matches the most authoritative source you can find. When entering an author or artist names, a dropdown will appear with any names matching your entry that are already in the archive; choose one of these if applicable.

You will then enter the name of an online source where users of the archive can go for more information, and a link (URL) to that source's page containing information on the work you are submitting.

• For visual art, the ideal source is the collection record for the artwork on the website of the museum to which it belongs. If this is not available, reputable online archives such as Google Arts & Culture or the Web Gallery of Art can suffice. For works like cave paintings that do not belong to museums, Wikipedia or another reference site will sometimes be the best source of information. When entering the name of the source, a dropdown will appear with matching sources already in the archive; choose one of these if applicable.
• For literary works, the ideal source is an online archive containing the full text of the work (or at least a preview including your excerpt). Popular and reputable sources include Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, Google Books, and Poetry Foundation. If this is not available, a link to the work's page on its publisher's site is an acceptable substitute. Reference sites like Wikipedia may be the best option in certain cases.

For visual art, the next step is to provide a direct link (URL) to an image depicting the full artwork. Typically this link will have a .jpg or .png extension; support for other formats is not guaranteed. The image at the URL does not need to be high-resolution, as the Menagerie Project will only use it to generate a thumbnail (as a search tool, we do our best to honor copyright by storing only thumbnails and never full copies of images).

The easiest way to obtain this URL is often to right-click (or Ctrl+Click) on an image in your browser and choose "Copy Image Address." Once you enter or paste in the link, a preview of the image should appear directly below your entry; if it does not, your URL is invalid for our purposes and you should find another.

For literary works, the next step is to provide an excerpt containing the reference. Some rough guidelines on choosing an excerpt: for poetry, enter a single complete stanza (if the work has longer stanzas), two or three stanzas (if the work has shorter stanzas), or five to ten lines (if the work does not have stanzas). For prose, enter a single complete paragraph (if the passage has longer paragraphs), two or three paragraphs (if the passage has shorter paragraphs), or five to ten lines containing complete sentences (if there are no paragraph breaks). Use our HTML editor to ensure that the excerpt matches the formatting in the source text as closely as possible.

The next step is to tag your submission to the best of your ability with the IDs of the organisms it contains. If a visual artwork depicts multiple types of organism, it should be entered as a single submission and tagged with multiple IDs. If a literary work refers to multiple types of organism within a brief passage, it can be entered as a single excerpt and tagged with multiple IDs. It can also be split into multiple submissions if the excerpt length exceeds our maximum (1000 characters, or about 200 words).

• For each organism, you should aim to tag it with the most precise ID of which you are confident. If that is only at the level of "Perching Birds" or "Plants," that's perfectly acceptable - as long as you believe that other community members may be able to refine your ID. Make sure to check the "More ID needed" box after entering your ID(s) if this is the case.
• The Menagerie Project relies on iNaturalist for its taxonomy (organism names and classifications). iNaturalist is a global citizen-science project that currently serves as the most comprehensive and accessible source for data on the planet's living things. When you start typing a name in the textbox under "Add an ID," any matching names in iNat's database will be provided as suggestions, ordered by the cumulative number of iNat observations for each. This means that higher-level groups like kingdoms, phyla, classes, and orders will appear above lower-level groups like families, genera, and species. Taxa that are already in the Menagerie Project will be highlighted in green text to help guide your choice.
• A good rule of thumb is to choose the lowest name on the list of suggestions that contains an exact match for the term you have entered. For example, if you are submitting an excerpt referring to a "crow," the top suggestion will be the family Corvidae (Crows, Jays, and Magpies) and the second will be the more specific genus Corvus (Crows and Ravens). The latter is the most specific taxon containing all crows, and is the safest choice. A more specific taxon like American Crow or Carrion Crow should only be chosen if there is strong evidence that that taxon was intended. (See below.) For a species that has a higher group all to itself - like Osprey, which appears on the list as Ospreys (family Pandionidae), Ospreys (genus Pandion), and Osprey (species Pandion haliaetus) - the lowest choice (the species in this case) is the best one.
• You may rely on geographical and historical inference to apply a more specific ID, even if the taxon isn't explicitly named. This is a big part of the fun! For example, a poem mentioning deer that is clearly set in Florida, where White-tailed Deer is the only species present, can be tagged with that species. A nineteenth-century text by a New England writer mentioning "partridge" can be tagged as Ruffed Grouse, which has long been colloquially known by that name. (The Gray Partridge, the only North American bird officially possessing the name, is not native to the continent and has never been established in New England.) You are encouraged to justify your choice by entering a note below the taxon you've chosen, so that other users can follow your reasoning.
• Some caution is needed when choosing an ID, as the same name can be applied to multiple unrelated taxa! For example, a reference to "antelope" in a book set in Africa is likely best tagged as subfamily Antilopinae (Antelopes, Goats, and Sheep). (The more specific tribe Antilopini (Typical Antelopes) may well apply, but this excludes many of the continent's dwarf antelopes and others.) In North America, on the other hand, the name "antelope" very likely refers to the pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), which belongs in a completely separate family.
• And if these details feel overwhelming, just check the "Needs more ID" box and rest assured that someone in the community will relish the challenge of nailing down the ID.

What happens to my submission?

At present all submissions are automatically accepted as long as they pass our internal validation (e.g., if an image can be found and processed at the URL you've provided for an artwork). Submissions are processed nightly, so should be visible in our archive within 24 hours. If your submission does not show up, that means either that it could not be processed or that it has already been reported by another community member. You are welcome to email us with any questions or concerns.

Similarly, using the Report tool results in the work being automatically and immediately removed from public display. Reported works are still subject to manual review by admins, and reports may be overruled.