Branner Blog

The key here is 1903. Many of our pre-1923 titles have been scanned by Google and can be found in their entirety through Google Books. This questioner was in luck; the desired volume, “Report on the Eruptions of the Soufriere, in St. Vincent, in 1902…” is available, along with incredible plates like this one of Soufriere’s crater.

This question has us scurrying. A few suggestions to start, and we’ll add more later:

We’ve been asked this question a few times recently, and while there is no guarantee that a thesis or dissertation from the School of Earth Sciences has an accessible, digital version, here are several places to check:

Other options:

Try the website of the students former research group. For example, the Environmental Geophysics group has links to some of their former students’ works here: link

Of course, there’s always google.

And, email. (Most students would be quite pleased to hear from someone with an interest in their work.)

All of these thesis links live together under this del.icio.us tag:
http://del.icio.us/branner/theses

Any other ideas?

In response to user requests (questions that start off like: isn’t there a way to…, or wouldn’t it be nice if we could… and end with musings about the possibilities of doing it all: searching for references, saving/storing pdfs, tagging/labeling/manipulating/creating records, retrieving information, and incorporating it into the writing process), I’m trying to get a handle on the various bibliographic management tools out there. Our library serves a diverse set of users whose studies span the Earth Sciences from geologists and petroleum engineers to earthsystem-ists and environmental policy types. I don’t expect one tool to meet all of their needs, but I’ve suspected that we can offer different and better suggestions and solutions than Endnote and Refworks.

These two resources are great tools, but both can be a little bit clunky and pre-2.0. To date, our advice tends to fork at the intersection between web-based (Refworks) vs. local (Endnote), and free (we have a campus site license to Refworks) vs. pay (Endnote). (As an aside, you technically adept users who have found your way to the world of BibDesk/BibTeX, we’d love to hear what has worked for you.)

I may be coming late to the blogosphere on this topic, but as I’ve researched the options, I’ve realized that our preferences and observations as librarians are different from some of the other commenters out there so I hope this will be a useful exercise. In that spirit, I offer a review of some options that are out there (in no particular order), relying heavily on what others have written.

I have really enjoyed posts from Academic Productivity about reference management tools, and specifically on online reference management and its convergence with social networking tools. I recommend them, and the blog in general, if you’re interested in these topics.

Here are my picks:

1. Zotero:
Zotero lets you

“gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of your research in a variety of ways. An extension to the popular open-source web browser Firefox, Zotero includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote)—the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software and web applications (like iTunes and del.icio.us), such as the ability to interact, tag, and search in advanced ways.”

I installed Zotero about a year ago, but really haven’t given it much time yet. I was excited about its potential as a way of managing ephemeral web content and pdfs, but haven’t used it much as a bibliographic tool.

One extensive review that I found helpful comes from a PhD student in history. It’s a different perspective from over here in the sciences, but incredibly thorough and insightful.

2. LibraryThing
I mentioned LibraryThing a few posts ago and haven’t done much with it since. It is a great tool, but is geared toward books not articles, and although this is hardly a criticism, seems too much fun for work (ie. it doesn’t have that sobering “this is intended for an academic audience” disclaimer that some of the tools promise). Others might find this more useful, but in a journal-heavy discipline, it seems best left for hobby reading.

3. Citeulike
Citeulike is free and web-based. It allows you to export references to BibTeX or Endnote during the writing process. It stores links, not whole articles, and has been described as del.icio.us for academic papers. It’s an interesting iteration of the tagging/social bookmarking/sharing world as applied to academic content. You can install the citeulike bookmarklet in your browser, do your searching and click the link when you’re ready to add a reference. The service works with several publishers/platforms and extracts metadata from their sites so you don’t have to.

Other services do this as well, but citeulike offers some nice points of discovery (always a sought-after feature for a librarian) including RSS feeds and watchlists allowing users to track the latest additions to particular tag categories as well as other users’ libraries. You can also monitor additions according to subject, as in the latest papers saved in “Earth/Environmental Science.”

This article provided a good explanation of the features.

4. Connotea
Connotea, a web-based service from the Nature Publishing Group, has a lot in common with citeulike including: saving, organizing, tagging and sharing references. It is also free, and gives you the ability to discover new leads from other users. I found this review from Duke Library’s libraryhacks to be quite helpful.

I’ve been toying with the idea of making a table to compare the various options, but it’s been done. Here’s a comparison of reference management software from wikipedia with information about operating system compatability, ability to import and export citations, what citation styles are supported, database connectivity and word processor integration.

In the end, no one product does it all–it’s a personal choice, but all of this searching has left me with a few questions: is the social networking option important or just distracting? It seems really exciting now, but will it offer more than traditional citation linking? Do users want their libraries and references to be public? And, would anyone really subscribe to (and then follow) a feed consisting of updates to someone else’s library?

(This is first attempt. I expect that there will be updates to this topic down the line.)

Here’s a link to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) for the Earth Sciences. I offer this site in response to a question from one of our most frequent referencees(?). In addition to the EGU published and patron-recommended Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, DOAJ links to about 100 other Earth Science related open access journals.

For information about DOAJ and their definition of open access, go here.

We just heard about a new search engine: MetaCarta’s GeoIntel for Petroleum, an “online geographic search for the energy industry.”

The resource bills itself as an “easy to use and efficient tool for discovering Web-based energy-related intelligence that is related to specific geographic places.”

I like the spatial aspect–being able to place your results geographically is a nice feature–but the results themselves don’t appear to offer much more than a google search. I was excited to try GeoIntel because some of our most difficult reference questions deal with energy, specifically requests for oil field related data. The proprietary nature of information in the energy industry makes these questions particularly challenging. This resource doesn’t offer any new insight into that dilemma, but nonetheless, it’s an interesting concept. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Just getting started on this question and would appreciate any assistance. Looking for websites or other resources, particularly something with a “how-to” slant.

Thanks.

This is a tough question, but a list I’ve been meaning to compile for a while.

This particular patron walked away with Assembling California by John McPhee and Roadside geology of northern California by David Alt. Other recommendations follow (the books themselves will be on display in Branner for browsing and borrowing). This list is intended as a starting point, by no means exhaustive.

General interest earth science-themed reading:
• The Age of the Earth by Dalrymple; QE508 .D28 1991
• Annals of the Former World by McPhee; QE77 .M38 1998 which includes:
• Basin and Range; QE79 .M28 1981
• In Suspect Terrain; QE78.3 .M36 1983
• Rising from the Plains; QE79 .M29 1986
• Assembling California; QE89 .M37 1993
• Beyond Oil: the View from Hubbert’s Peak by Deffeyes; TP318 .D44 2005
• Cataclysms on the Columbia by Allen; QE581 .A43 1991
• Collapse by Diamond; HN13 .D5 2005
• Field notes from a Catastrophe by Kolbert; QC981.8 .G56 K655 2006
• Krakatoa by Winchester; QE523 .K73 W56 2003B
• Life: a natural history of the first four billion years of life on earth by Fortey; QH366.2 .F69 1997
• The Map that Changed the World by Winchester; QE22 .S6 W55 2001
• Plate Tectonics by Oreskes; QE511.4 .P53 2001
• The Rejection of Continental Drift by Oreskes; QE511.4 .O74 1999
• Something New Under the Sun by McNeill; GF13 .M39 2000
• T-Rex and the Crater of Doom by Alvarez; QE506 .A48 1997
• Volcano Cowboys by Thompson; QE521 .T48 2000

Other lists from the blogogeosphere (or is it the geoblogosphere?):
Apparent Dip’s Great Science Book Challenge
Geology Home Companion’s Geology Reading List
California Council of Geoscience Organization’s Armchair Geologist Reading List

Stay tuned for future lists, and updates to the aforementioned. Anticipated themes include: environmental classics, geobiographies, geology of California, fuel for thought. Please send suggested titles or potential themes our way.

An article by Jones and Roszelle (1978) was mentioned in an Energy Resources Engineering assignment. A student in the course wanted to find said article.

There are many ways to answer such a question. In this case, we did an advanced search in GeoRef using the GeoScienceWorld interface,* and found the record below:

Title Graphical techniques for determining relative permeability from displacement experiments
Author(s) S. C. Jones and W. O. Roszelle
Affiliation Marathon Oil Co., United States;
Serial Title JPT. Journal of Petroleum Technology
Source 30(5) pp.807-817 (May 1978)
Publisher American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, Dallas, TX
Language English
Publication Year 1978

We then checked the call number of JPT in Socrates. The assignment was due soon and the volume was not in the stacks, but we were able to find it on the reshelving truck.

*We also have access to GeoRef via CSA. Take your pick.

There are a few resources that can answer the question. The best option will depend on which measurements are most important. In each case, you can read more about the criteria for ranking within each source.

1. The National Research Council publication, Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States Continuity and Change, seems to be the most respected in the rankings world. Unfortunately, the rankings are old (1995) and won’t be updated until later this year. It offers rankings for general geosciences, but not specific sub-disciplines. The library owns many print copies of the publication, and at least one lives at Green: Q180 .N334 1995.

A version of the data can be found at: http://www.phds.org/rankings/geoscience/rank
This source allows you to customize the NRC data according to chosen criteria.

2. The other option is the US News and World Report. The latest print copy is 2007. Our access to the online version is limited to the top 3 programs. This source offers rankings for general Earth Sciences, and also, Geochemistry, Geology, Geophysics/Seismology, and Paleontology.

3. More general sources for ranking can be found at: http://www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/rankgrad.htm