2. Getting Started
Rather obviously, an expedition that is going to be a success needs a lot of planning. But what is expedition planning? What do you need to think about? What do you need to do? Where do you start?
A good place to start is the Royal Geographical Society’s Expedition Advisory Centre (RGS-EAC). Their website provides all sorts of useful advice, and they maintain a searchable online database of past expeditions from the UK (an excellent source of ideas and contacts), information on medical issues and all sorts of other issues you may never have thought about.
The RGS-EAC also publish an excellent book called the Expedition Planner’s Handbook, which is sadly currently out-of-print, but can be found in a few Oxford libraries, including Plant Sciences and Zoology, and OUEC also have a copy which OUEC members can borrow.
However, a new edition is at the printers, will be out in April 2004, and in the mean time, the RGS have put all the chapters on the web, where they may (for the time being) be downloaded free of charge, on their website at http://www.rgs.org/eacpubs. They also publish lots of little books on particular expedition techniques, expedition medicine, etc., details of all which are again available on their website. OUEC has lots of these books, which members are free to borrow for up to a month. Contact the Secretary for more details, or (soon, not yet) check our online library catalogue.
CUEX, the Cambridge University Expeditions Society, have produced an excellent short guide to planning an expedition, which until one of the OUEC committee gets round to doing the same but making it Oxford-relevant, we thoroughly recommend. Please remember that all the academics, etc., that it gives phone numbers for are in Cambridge, and are unlikely to take especially kindly to being e-mailed out of the blue by a lowly undergraduate at a different university. Their guide (the CUEX Planners’ Pack) is at:
http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/cuex/resources.htm
Also bear in mind that the procedure for getting your expedition approved by the University is different in Oxford from what it is in Cambridge. You can find out all about getting Oxford University approval for an expedition by clicking here.
***
OUEC is here to help, so if you have any queries or problems with any of the above, or any suggestions to improve this brief guide, then please do e-mail us, at ouec@herald.ox.ac.uk, and we’ll try and do our best.
