Day 3, 13 June

Another sunny and hot day in Boulder.

The first item on todays agenda was the presentation of the William Mills Prize for Non Fiction Polar Books for 2012. The prize this year went to Jerry Kobalenko for his book Arctic Eden : journeys through the changing high Arctic. The committee will be posting some more information about the winner and  the other candidates on the blog shortly.

Today's sessions began with Allaina Wallace from ROCS/NSIDC  telling us about the importance of making emergency plans for events like flooding or fire. Their library had experienced a water leak in 2009 and had afterwards made plans of what to do. Covering shelves with plastic, knowing what to save first, who to call, and having the information available in a simple and accesible form were some of the important issues.

Erin Palmer from the NWT Geoscience Office told us about the status of the informations services in northern Canada. She went through the libraries and archives in Northwest Territories, Yukon,  and Nunavut, and told us about the issues the struggle with, the programmes they are involved with, and the successes they have experienced.

Lisa Adamo from US Geological Survey told us about the Antarctic ressources that have been moved from the US Antarctic Resource Center to the USGS library. The material consist of aerial photographs, satellite images, and technical reports. A lot of it is not indexed, but the plan is to get it recorded, integrated in the library, and make it accessible on a website.

Ross Goodwin informed us of the status of the IPY publications database, which is a project which several polar institutions are involved in. It is estimated that app. 20.000 publications would be the outcome of IPY 2007/08. The database contains publications from all 4 IPYs. So far 5.503 titles has been included, of these 2.890 titles are from the 2007/08 IPY. The reason so few publications have been registered. It is available on www.nisc.com/ipy. The Arctic and Antarctic Regions database does not contain the IPY records created after June 2009. Lack of funding for the CRBP has affected input to the database. It is believed that work will continue on the project for at least the next 10 years.

Liz Schlagel from NSIDC informed us of the DAHLI project which stands for Discovery and Access of Historical Literature from the IPYs. The project collects and catalogues world wide holdings of IPY data from the four IPYs, and the database is hosted in the ROCS library. As archival management system ARCHON has been chosen.

After lunch there was a change in programme as Chris Jenkins from INSTAAR was not able to attend. Instead we watched a film called Good days on the trail from 1938-1942 with the University of Colorado Department of Mountain Recreation.

After that G. Garrett Campbell told us about recovering satellite films from the 1960ies. Data was stored on films at that time. The project is to digitize 100.000 images and attach metadata to them. Once the project is completed they will be made accessible on a website.

The the traditional group photo was taken, and the afternoon ended with another film showing. IGY Station Alpha about the American ice drifting station in the Arctic Sea in 1957-58.

Vibeke Sloth Jakobsen

Day 2 - PLC 24

Day 2 of the Colloquy featured a panel discussion, a poster session, and a tour rather than regular sessions.

AAR panel: Moving forward

The day began with a panel discussion about the Arctic and Antarctic Regions database. Sharon Tahirkheli (AGI) chaired the discussion with panelists Martha Andrews (INSTAAR retired), Ross Goodwin (AINA), and Craig Brandt (EBSCO Senior Director, Product Management). The discussion focused on how we can get past the stalled process that means new records from contributors like SPRI and ASTIS have not been added to AAR.

Sharon gave an account of funding cuts, personnel changes, and what has happened between EBSCO and AAR participants over the last few years. Martha reviewed the history of AAR: why it was begun within PLC, who was involved, and how the records were handled and became a CD-ROM subscription product from NISC. In 2009 EBSCO bought AAR and converted it to an online database as part of its suite of products.

Craig Brandt expressed a desire for better communication with the PLC user group and came as a product developer (rather than sending a sales representative) to aid direct, useful conversations. He presented some information on how EBSCO's processes work and listed their concerns. The NISC version of AAR was designed to ingest records from 9 different organizations, each with different controlled vocabularies and formats. EBSCO can really only build one ingest tool for each database. They were stymied by how to de-dup records and standardize the controlled vocabularies used by various contributors. They identified a number of journals with polar content, and added cover-to-cover records from those journals. In retrospect that added a large number of records that had nothing to do with polar subjects to the database, diluting the quality of search results.

Discussion revolved around how we can move forward from here, building a smooth pipeline for contributors' records into AAR and increasing the quality of the database. EBSCO was already aware of the problem of irrelevant content and Craig relayed that many of the records about tropical and temperate environments will be removed. Only 3-4 of the organizations that originally contributed records to AAR are still adding to their bibliographies, which reduces the number of players to worry about. PLC members agreed that duplicate records were not a major problem for us or our users, which removes one of EBSCO's concerns. EBSCO will convert records to their own, less specific controlled vocabulary, but can maintain contributors' vocabularies in a different field as well so that they can still be used in search. Overall, we came out with a workable approach to renewing the database. I for one am looking forward to renewing my library's AAR subscription that I let lapse a couple of years ago.  

Poster session

After a break, a poster session gave us glimpses into many interesting projects. Sandy Campbell (coauthors Kim Frail, Debbie Feisst, and Robert Desmarais) showed us the Deakin Review of Children's Literature, a quarterly review of quality children's books that The University of Alberta Libraries just took over last year. Kathy Murray's "Health Aspects of Arctic Exploration" portrayed the research materials of Robert Fortuine, donated to the University of Anchorage libraries in 2006. Nancy Gonzales of DRPA Canada talked about her poster "Northwest Territories Geoscience Office Online Business Applications." Hilary Shibata of SPRI presented "The Scott Centenary Bibliography Project: Adapting Old Records to New Standards of Accessibility," that she coauthored with the absent Heather Lane. Ross Goodwin of AINA displayed the various flavors of ASTIS on "The Arctic Science and Technology Information System (ASTIS): Canada's National Northern Database." And Heidi McCann (coauthors Chris McNeave, Mark Parsons, Shari Gearheard, Henry Huntington, and Peter Pulsifer, all of National Snow and Ice Data Center) displayed a poster on the project she spoke on during Day 1, "Archiving Local and Traditional Knowledge of the Arctic."

NICL tour

After lunch we piled into a bus and headed down Highway 93 to the National Ice Core Lab, part of the U.S. Geological Survey facility in Denver's Federal Center. Geoff Hargreaves, NICL Curator, showed us a drill and told us how ice is cored and what the cores tell us about the climate and environment of past eras. We peppered him with questions. By the end of the tour we had learned how the cores are transported to the lab, how they are processed in the lab, where the cores come from, where other core facilities are located around the world (lots of help from the crowd on that one), the characteristics of ice from various depths, dealing with pressure and temperature changes, what analyses are run on the cores, where the data goes, what metadata is kept about each core, and many other topics. Geoff used FileMaker 1 to store information about the cores when they first set up the lab, and they are still using it (now in version 11). Thank you Geoff for your gracious indefatigability!

 We filed past the windows of the lab, watching an energetic group of scientists and grad students process sections of core in a kind of assembly line (disassembly line?). The work room is kept colder than negative 30 degrees C, so that ice dust created by sawing the cores into pieces doesn't melt into water droplets. People working in the lab wear insulated suits, with latex gloves over their insulated gloves to reduce contamination of the ice. Geoff changes the blades on the saws every day during work sessions.

Then we assembled for the highlight of the tour: Geoff slid back a big insulated door and let us into the storage area of the lab, kept at a cozy negative 40 degrees. We filed into the aisles, where the silver cylinders holding core pieces are stacked on shelves reaching high overhead. We saw cores from sites in Greenland and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, among others. Berit thought the lab felt fairly comfortable, but the rest of us were shivering and exclaiming at the cold.

Back on the bus and to Boulder!

24th Colloquy coming up quickly

In just over a week, many of us will convene in Boulder, Colorado for the Colloquy June 11-14.  A few notes:

First, there is still time to register if you haven't already.

The program is set and features a variety of outstanding sessions on creative approaches to services, library structures and practices, "trials by fire," and new developments in data and databases.

We will address the future of the Arctic and Antarctic Regions database as a community during a panel and open discusssion. 

The opening keynote is by Jim White, Director of INSTAAR, ice core expert, and an eminent climatologist playing a major role in our understanding of abrupt climate change.  Our closing speaker is Leilani Henry, daughter of the first African-American to set foot on Antarctica and an inveterate storyteller.

For those coming to Boulder, don't forget to pack:

• Your auction items!
• Sunscreen and a light jacket, just in case.
• Any presentation slides - you can email to library@nsidc.org next week.

We can't wait to say hello at the Icebreaker Sunday evening in the Aspen Leaf Room at the conference hotel from 7:00-8:30 p.m.  Stop by to meet friends, pick up registration packets, and have some light refreshments.

For those unable to make it, participants will add to this blog each day from the Colloquy.  Stay tuned for notes about sessions and takeaway messages.

All the best,
  Shelly, Allaina, and Gloria (your Boulder hosts)