My tasks for this summer regarding my senior design seminar project has been to collect the data I need and to accompany an animal control officer for one of their shifts so I could get first hand experience with what I would be researching.

I have borrowed several books from the library regarding Edward Tufte. I am completely amazed by the maps and graphs he has created.

My first city of which I was going to research was Chelsea, Massachusetts. I have spent a month chasing around an animal control officer with no returned phone calls or e-mails. After running into him in person and explaining once again what I was looking for, he informed that that animal control does not keep logs of calls they receieve or what they respond to. (Would it have been that hard to reply to the e-mails saying that?)I find it hard to believe that there are no records on what they do, because for all their employers knows they could be sitting on their butts all day ignoring calls.

I am going to attempt to get in contact with another city's animal control department to see if this is the way every animal control is run. While I am doing this I am going to be contacting several animal rescue leagues to see if they possibly have records of where their animals came from and if there are call logs. I believe this may be a better option because seeing as many animal rescue leagues are run by donations I would think they need to keep tabs on everything... or at least I hope so!