2016, a good year!

The Bat Scan Project continues to make excellent progress. Additional thousands of Merlin's Kodachrome bat slides have been scanned in recent months. As these decades-old slides age they deteriorate, so scanning is our first priority. Once the slides are scanned and key-worded in our system, the process of editing, captioning and organizing them into quickly searchable databases is still a time consuming endeavor. We currently have more than 1,700 images of 260 species conveniently posted and searchable. And in just six months we've already supplied approximately 2,000 requests from 300 users in 26 countries. These photos have provided a basis for major bat exhibits from the U.S. and Europe to Asia and Africa and have educated millions of people through news media and science publications. We look forward to sharing hundreds of additional scans early in 2017.

In the year ahead, we'll begin incorporating our unique images into special programs for children, educators and a variety of additional users. We deeply appreciate donations from our Bat Fan members who are making so much progress possible.