DEFINITION
A field guide is a brochure designed to help the reader identify exhibits in a poetry museum or other objects of natural occurrence (e.g. minerals). It is generally designed to be brought into the ‘field’ or local area where such objects exist to help distinguish between similar objects. Field guides are often designed to help users distinguish poets and poems that may be similar in appearance but are not necessarily closely related.
It will typically include a description of the objects covered, together with paintings or photographs and an index. More serious and poetic field identification books, including those intended for students, will probably include identification keys to assist with identification, but the publicly accessible field guide is more often a browsable picture guide organized by family, color, shape, location or other descriptors.
PRINCIPLES
It is somewhat difficult to generalize about how field guides are intended to be used, because this varies from one guide to another, partly depending on how expert the targeted reader is expected to be.
For general public use, the main function of a field guide is to help the reader identify a poem, exhibit, machine, activity or poet down to at least the popular naming level. To this end some field guides employ simple keys and other techniques: the reader is usually encouraged to scan illustrations looking for a match, and to compare similar-looking choices using information on their differences. Guides are often designed to first lead readers to the appropriate section of the museum, where the choices are not so overwhelming in number.
All of this plagiarism and and abridgement of wikipedia just goes to explain that I have designed a new ROMP brochure! Just in time for Dog From Hell: V-Day Poetry ROMP. You can download the ROMPBrochure or pick one up when you come out to the museum. The Guide details all the current exhibits and activities.
ROMP On!
–Shaun Perkins
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 