Introduction

This page contains information about, and downloads of, two index files created and maintained by Dr Philip Stanley over the last 34 years:

• The Cumulative Index is an index of items (articles, monographs etc) from all BBS and Moss Exchange Club publications
• The References index is an index of references cited in the main BBS publications

Up until 2021, these indexes and all information pertaining to them were available via Dr Stanley’s website, www.lumiweb.com. At the 2021 Autumn meeting, it was agreed to incorporate these into the BBS website and this has now been done. Much of the text below therefore was written by Dr Stanley.

The BBS is indebted to Dr Stanley for his dedication in creating and maintaining the indexes for more than 30 years!

Both files were last updated in December 2024, and include references from:

Journal of Bryology – up to vol. 46 part 3  (2024)
Field Bryology – up to vol. 132  (2024)
Trustees reports – up to 2023

Dr Stanley has spent considerable time this year (2024), not just updating but also rationalising existing references to make the formats consistent and remove some duplicates. Thanks are also due to Clare Shaw, who volunteered to help by proof reading some of the recent entries.

The indexes are downloadable below as Excel spreadsheets. The Cumulative Index contains some 75,660 records, and AllRefs around 95,000 records.

 Please report any errors or omissions, by email to bbsindex@lumiweb.com

The Cumulative Index is an index of items (articles, monographs etc) from all BBS publications from 1896 to the present day, including:

MEC Reports including Section II Reports (Vols 1-2; 1896 – 1922)
BBS Reports (Vols 1-4; 1923-1945)
Transactions of the British Bryological Society (Vols. 1-6; 1947-1971)
Journal of Bryology (Vols 7 – 46; 1972 – 2024)
Field Bryology (Vols. 83 – 132; 2004 – 2024)

The full list of publications included is given on sheet 2 of the Cumulative Index spreadsheet which can be downloaded below.

Download the Index as an Excel spreadsheet

This is an index of all the references cited in:

Transactions of the British Bryological Society (Vols. 1-6; 1947 – 1971)
Journal of Bryology (Vols 7 – 46; 1972 – 2024)
Field Bryology (Vols. 83 – 132; 2002 – 2024)

These references have been selected from PDFs of the publications which have then been subjected to OCR (Optical Character Recognition). This latter process is less than perfect, especially where diacritic characters (for example letters with accents, é, ü, ŝ) are concerned. Very little effort has been made to correct such matters and the database is provided as is.

You will find many cases where references are replicated but often not exactly the same. No indication is made as to which, if any is/are correct.

I have produced this index for those needing an aide memoire to find that reference which one knows but is so elusive when trying to remember the exact details.

I, Philip Stanley, have been given permission to extract and copy these references from the Journal of Bryology, by Taylor & Francis, [http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/yjbr20] who act for the British Bryological Society in matters of Copyright of the Journal.

Download AllRefs as an Excel spreadsheet

Unfortunately not all browser / spreadsheet software works in the same way.  Depending on your browser / browser settings, a spreadsheet may be opened within a browser window, or may be downloaded onto your device. It is recommended that you download the files if possible, as this will probably give you more search options.

When the Excel file is downloaded it is in “Protected View” and to use it you must click on “Enable Editing”.

The guidance below is for Microsoft Office Excel 2016. Earlier versions do not have the option for a second word search. Other spreadsheet software may also work differently. If you have problems using the spreadsheets, please contact webmaster@britishbryologicalsociety.org.uk in the first instance.

Search for a single word or short phrase in the Cumulative Index

Method 1: A simple Control-F and entering the search term, e.g. Dicranella, and clicking Find All will show all found citations. However it is not easy to copy citations to Notepad or Word using this procedure.

Method 2 (recommended):

1. In the top left cell of the downloaded Excel file (cell A1 has BBS SEARCH in it and is colour filled), click on the down arrow at right hand end of cell A1

2. Select and click “Text Filters” to reveal the Autofilter box, wait until you can see “Contains” from the new dropdown menu. Click on Contains.

3. In the box to right of Contains enter the text you wish to search for, e.g. Dicranella and then click OK.

4. A list of citations containing Dicranella is displayed. Select the citation(s) of interest and copy into a text editor programme such as Windows Notepad or word processor such as Word.

To make another search go to (1.) as above or press Control-Z then Control-Home to again display the entire BBS Cumulative Index Excel database.

Do not try to save the file when you finish.

Search for 2 separate words or short phrases in the Cumulative Index

If you wish, you can search for a second term that occurs in the same citations as say Dicranella.

1. In the top left cell of the downloaded Excel file (cell A1 has BBS SEARCH in it and is colour filled), click on the down arrow at right hand end of cell A1.

2. Select and click “Text Filters” to reveal the Autofilter box, wait until you can see “Contains” from the new dropdown menu. Click on Contains.

3. In the box to right of Contains enter the text of first term you wish to search for, e.g. Dicranella make sure the “and” button is selected and click the empty box below the “and” button and select “Contains” from dropdown menu. This time enter the second term, tuber. Click OK

4. A list of those citations containing both Dicranella and tuber is displayed. Select the citation(s) of interest and copy them into a text editor programme such as Windows Notepad or word processor such as Word.

5. To make another search go to (1.) as above or press Control-Z then Control-Home to again display the entire BBS Cumulative Index Excel database.

Do not try to save the file when you finish.

by Dr Philip Stanley

This idea for an index came about in 1988 at the suggestions of the late Professor Paul Richards and late Dr Eustace Jones and I am very grateful to them for their advice when commencing the project. A number of other members of the Society have since provided me with help and encouragement including Gordon Rothero, Tom Blockeel, Len Ellis, Jeff Duckett, Liz Kungu and David Long and I wish to place on record my thanks to all of them.

I also wish to thank Ian Atherton who provided me with a copy of the index used in the Field Guide (2010) as this saved me a lot of time since I did not have to enter all the many new species names which were a feature of the Guide. Likewise I am grateful to Dr Chris Preston for providing me with the indices to Atlas of British & Irish Bryophytes, vols 1 and 2, 2014. I am grateful to Paul Reade for carefully scrutinising M.E.C. Reports in 2013 and so providing me with the likely, rather than presumed, publication years.

The section on References (AllRefs) contains all the cited references extracted from the Transactions and Journal of Bryology and is provided by kind permission of the Council of the British Bryological Society and its publisher Taylor & Francis.

I recognise and include in AllRefs the regular lists of new publications published in the Journal of Bryology, these include those by the late Dr Eric Watson, Prof. Jeff Duckett, Dr Giles Clarke, Mr Len Ellis and Dr Angela Newton.

I am grateful to Mrs Jean Paton for agreeing to allow me to include her Census Catalogue of British Hepatics (4th Edition), 1965.

In particular I am grateful to my friend the late Roy Perry († 2014) at National Museum of Wales in Cardiff who provided counsel on points concerning format and bryology as well as generously giving advice based on his unrivalled knowledge of the BBS and M.E.C.

Work on the Index was started in 1988 with a view to providing Members of the Society with a printed copy, however the rising costs of printing became a major concern and when PDF format became available on the Internet this method of publication was chosen as it has the added advantage that it can be corrected, edited and updated as necessary.

During the early work on the Index, it was often necessary to refer back to previously indexed publications, and it soon became obvious that a series of lists of the Society’s publications with their pagination would be a great help. These are included on this site together with a list of Presidents and Secretaries.

The Society was founded in 1896 as the Moss Exchange Club (M.E.C.) and in 1923 became the British Bryological Society (BBS). This Index includes all of its publications from 1896 until present date. Some ephemera such as printed pages of Desiderata lists (M.E.C.) have been seen but have not been included.

Update by Claire Halpin, 2021

At the Autumn meeting in September 2021, Dr Stanley approached the BBS Council to ask if they would consider incorporating the contents of his website – including the Cumulative Index – into the new BBS website. It was agreed that this was a sensible step to take, and would save Dr Stanley the onerous task of maintaining a separate website. Work started on incorporating the content from Phil’s website into the BBS website in November 2021.

Version 00.01 – Original site uploaded August 2003. Index for period 1896 – 2000.

Version 00.02 – Uploaded September 2003. Minor corrections to V 00.01.

Version 03.01 – Uploaded 12 April 2004. Index for period 1896 – 2003, including citations of BBS Atlas (vols. 1 – 3), and corrections and improved consistency of citation style.

Version 04.01 – Uploaded 10 May 2005. Index for period 1896 – 2004. Newly issued Field Bryology now included.

Version 05.01 – Uploaded 19 January 2010. Index for period 1896 – 2009. Corrections and improved consistency of citation style.

Version 06.01 – Uploaded 29 January 2011. Index for period 1896 – 2010. Corrections and improved consistency of citation style. New Field Guide now included.

Version 06.02 – Uploaded 01 June 2011. Index for period 1896 – 2011 (June). Now includes Google maps of locations of BBS Spring and Summer Meetings, 1941-2011. Citations about BBS meetings (AGM, Spring, Summer, Paper Reading and Workshops) as well as local meetings have been reworked to provide better consistency.

Version 06.03 – Uploaded 06 September 2011. Index for period 1896 – 2011 (>FB 104 & >J Bryol 33 (2)). Maps showing where BBS has held Spring/Summer meetings has been discontinued.

Version 7.01 – Uploaded 12 January 2012. Index for period 1896 – 2011 (>FB 105 & >J Bryol 33).

Version 8.1 – Uploaded 01 April 2012. Index for period 1896 – 2012 (>FB106 & >J Bryol 34(1). All diacritics now included. Changed to new database software.

Version 8.2 – Uploaded 14 July 2012. Index for period 1896 – 2012 (>FB107 & >J Bryol 34(2). Spelling corrections.

Version 8.2.1 – Uploaded 20 July 2012. About one thousand records in Version 8.2 lacked the necessary italics around species names.
This has been corrected in this version.

Version 8.3 – Uploaded 14 October 2012. Index for period 1896 – 2012 (>J Bryol 34(3) & >FB #107. Spelling corrections. Improved consistency of style of citations.

Version 8.4 – Uploaded 14 Jan 2013. Index for period 1896 – 2012 (>J Bryol 34(4) & >FB #108.
Bryophyte Recording Handbook (2012) now included.

Version 9.1 – Uploaded 19 April 2013. Index for period 1896 – 2013 (>J Bryol 35(1) & >FB #108). Maps showing where BBS has held Spring/Summer meetings has been discontinued.
Improved consistency of style of citations and some corrections.

Version 10.1 – Uploaded 01 Jan 2014. Index for period 1896 – end 2013 (>J Bryol 35(4) & >FB #110)
Improved consistency of style of citations and some corrections.

Version 10.2 – Uploaded 27 Jan 2014. Index for period 1896 – end 2013 (>J Bryol 35(4) & >FB #110)
Some corrections to dates in FB #110

Version 10.3 – Uploaded 30 June 2014. Index for period 1896 – 2014 (>J Bryol 36(2) & >FB #111)

Version 10.4 – Uploaded 01 Oct 2014. Index for period 1896 – 2014. (>J Bryol 36(3) & FB> #111)

Version 10.4.1 – Uploaded 05 Nov 2014. Minor change in “About” file

Version 10.5 – Uploaded 01 Dec 2014. Added J Bryol 36(4) and FB 112

Version 11.1 – Uploaded Index 20 July 2015. Added J Bryol 37 (1 & 2), FB 113 and Atlas of British & Irish Bryophytes, vols 1 & 2 (published Nov 2014)

Verion 11.11 – Uploaded 02 September 2015. New section for “Atlases” created and these publications removed from “Other Publications”. Minor typographical errors corrected.

Version 11.2 – Uploaded 07 Dec 2015. Added J Bryol 37(3) and FB 114. Minor typographical errors corrected.

Version 12.1 – Uploaded 06 March 2016. Added J Bryol 37(4). Minor typographical errors corrected.

Version 12.2 – Uploaded 27 June 2016. Reworked some the records about Meetings and New V.-C. Records to provide better consistency.

Version 12.3 – Uploaded 27 September 2016. Includes J Bryol 38 (2 & 3), 2016.
Reworked New National and Regional Bryophyte Records (NNRBR).

Version 13.1 – Uploaded 17 April 2017. Includes J Bryol 38(4) 2016 and 39(1) 2017.

Version 13.2 – Uploaded 02 July 2017. Includes up to J Bryol, (39(2)) 2017 and FB-117 (2017). Minor inconsistences corrrected.

Version 13.3 – Uploaded 17 Oct 2017.Added to Cumulative Index J. Bryol, 39(3) (2017). Also PDFs of old census catalogues and other publications.
NEW: Also list of references, ALL REFS, cited in Transactions and J Bryol 39(3) (1947 – 2017) added.

Version 14.1 – Uploaded 04 Feb 2018. Added to Cumulative Index J. Bryol 39(4) (2017) and FB-118 (Nov 2017). Also ALL REFS now includes J. Bryol 39(4) 2017 as well as FB-82 (2004) > FB-118 (Nov 2017).

Version 14.2 – Uploaded 17 May 2018. Added to Cumulative Index J. Bryol 40(1) (2018).
Also ALL REFS now includes J. Bryol 40(1) (2018).
Added The York Catalogue of British Mosses, Compiled by Wheldon, J.A. (1889).

Version 14.3 – Uploaded 17 Nov 2018. Added to Cumulativr Index J. Bryol 40(2) and 40(2).
Also ALL REFS now includes J. Bryol (40(2) and 40(2) and FB-119.

Version 15.1 – Uploaded 14 Jan 2019. Added to Cumulativr Index J. Bryol 40(4) and FB-120..
Also ALL REFS now includes J. Bryol 40(4) and FB-120.

Version 15.2 – Uploaded 18 May 2019. Added Cumulative Index J. Bryol 41(1)
Also ALL REFS now includes J. Bryol 41(1)

Version 15.2B – 04 Sept 2019. Revised version of Cumulative Index 15.2 uploaded.

Version 15.3 – Uploaded 09 Nov 2019. Added Cumulative Index J. Bryol. 41(2) and 41(3) and FB-121. ALLREFS now includes J. Bryol 41(2) and (3) and FB-121.

Version 16.1 – Uploaded 17 Feb 2020. Updated Cumulative Index to J. Bryol 41(4)
and FB-122. Also ALL REFS now included J. Bryol. 41(4) and FB-122.

Version 16.2 – Uploaded 10 Nov 2020. Updated Cumulative Index to J. Bryol 42(3) and FB-123.

Version 17.1 – Uploaded 07 May 2021. Substantial change made, indexes no longer in PDF format but instead provided as searchable Excel files. In addition, text is presented with plain text, that is without italics and bold attributes. This latter makes searching much faster. Updated Cumulative Index to J. Bryol 43(1) and FB-124.

From January 2022, both index files are available as downloadable spreadsheets only, from the BBS website. Files will no longer be assigned a version number, but the date of the last update, and the latest issues of Journal of Bryology and Field Bryology to be included will be given on the website.

Index creation

ProCite: The bibliographic reference Windows database ProCite (PC, Versions 3, 4 & 5.0), {www.procite.com} was used from 1989 until end of 2011. Each database record contains a single citation. The practical advantage of this was that it was easy to switch between alphabetic sequence of citation and the sequence by journal volume and page.

EndNote: At the beginning of 2012, the database was transferred to Windows EndNote and it was then possible to include diacritical (umlauts, acute accents etc.), characters which had not been possible to include in ProCite.

In 2015 EndNote version 7 was used and version 8 from 2017 onwards.

Publication format

PDF files: Adobe Acrobat Pro in various versions has been used to generate the searchable PDF (Acrobat) files from the Rich Text Files (.rtf) exported from EndNote. Using “Find” within the Acrobat file could be made in the conventional way to find a specific word. This was the basis of searching the Index from 1989 to 2020.

Excel files: In 2021, the new version (17.1) of the PDF index produced from the database was deemed too large as routine searching on a standard Windows PC was becoming too slow for practical use. A new approach was required. To this end I stopped the use of PDF files and used in its place one based on Microsoft Excel (.xlsx files). Instead of generating an .rtf file from Procite the new procedure involved generating a .txt file (plain text) in which the text was without italic orbold attributes. The new search routine using Excel and its built in search facilities also made it possible to search for 2 different words in one citation.

Style and format

The style and format of the Index has followed those used in the Transactions. Thus as well as citing single words or short phrases, all papers are cited by their full title and again (at least) by the author’s(s’) name(s). Where there are two or more authors, the second and subsequent authors are cited and referred back to the first mentioned author. Please note that page and volume numbers less than 100 are preceded by one or two zeros. This has been done to facilitate sorting by the software.

Abbreviations have been used for names of journals etc. and a list of these can be found within the spreadsheet (as a separate sheet to the main index)

Citations in the Index are sorted by the software so there are inevitably some sequences which the bryologist will find rather odd, for example, “Sphagnum, cell development” appears between Sphagnum capillifolium and Sphagnum christatum. No attempt has been made to rectify this.

Groups of topics. Citations of a like nature have been grouped together, e.g. FLORAS contains floras, checklists, lists of species found in certain locations;