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