22nd Polar Libraries Colloquy - Wednesday, June 4, 2008

The third day of the Colloquy began with a joint PLC/University of the Arctic session on the IPY. Elena Sparrow, Director of the University of the Arctic IPY Coordination Office provided us with details on the wide range of IPY projects that the University is involved in. David Hik, University of Alberta, provided an overview of the IPY in Canada and Scott Forrest, UArctic Secretariat, demonstrated the UArctic Atlas.

The PLC then had a breakout session on IPY beginning with a report by Ross Goodwin on the progress being made on the International Polar Year Publications Database, a collaboration of five organizations attempting to track all of the publications that result from the IPY. To date about 630 IPY publications have been identified and any researchers or librarians that know of publications resulting from the IPY are encouraged to report the publications to one of the collaborators at http://biblioline.nisc.com/ipy/html/report.htm.

Reports on the IPY at various organizations followed: Susan Olmsted from NSF reported on the NSF IPY web site, Anna Fiolek from NOAA demonstrated some of the polar videoclips being made available on the NOAA website, and Berit Jakobsen reviewed the Norwegian IPY website.

The afternoon was devoted to a pleasant stroll through Fort Edmonton Park where we walked through history. The Park represents four distinct time periods: a fur trading post, 1885, 1905 and 1920.

After our return to Edmonton, we joined the University of the Arctic and celebrated with dinner and dancing at the Oldtimer’s Memorial Cabin

Sharon Tahirkheli, American Geological Institute