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Zoo Registrars: A Bewildering Bureaucracy, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

While their counterparts in the museum world have received some scholarly attention, no scholarly account of zoo registrars has been published to date. Why bother studying zoo registrars? Firstly, in the (contained) wildness of the zoo, the registrar performs the role of law and order. She (typically this position is employed by females) manages the administrative side of the zoo: a junction between data management and small-scale legal administration. Secondly, registrars both depict and represent the significant transformations that have occurred in North American zoos over the last few decades, from insular urban institutions exhibiting exotic animals for entertainment, to …