Glacier Bay
Bibliography
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About the Glacier Bay Ecosystem Initiative Bibliography
Introduction
This bibliography was compiled at Glacier Bay National Park and
Preserve, and is based upon a bibliography originally created by long-time
volunteer librarian, resident and all-around good soul, Doris Howe. As
wife of one of the Park's early Superintendents, she had the perfect
opportunity to meet and get to know many of the researchers and
naturalists as well as the wanderers, artists, writers, climbers and local
characters that have frequented the area since the 1960's. These are the
people whose lives and work have defined and documented much of the
natural wonder and cultural history of the Glacier Bay region. As the
years went by, many of them became well-known in their fields, and some
have taken on legendary stature in the annals of the Park. Because of
their friendship with Doris they have continued to send her many of their
papers and writings, all of which she has carefully preserved and
recorded. Her passion for this literature led her to create and organize
the Park library, and to begin documenting the written record of Glacier
Bay in a bibliographic format. This body of work included some 900
references by 1993.
Through efforts of the Glacier Bay Field Station (Biological
Resources Division) Doris' bibliography was scanned into a computerized
database (Endnote) in 1993, and many additions were made in the following
years by Park and Field Station personel. With support from the National
Biological Survey through the Glacier
Bay Ecosystem Initiative the work of creating the Glacier Bay
Ecosystem Bibliography (GLBA_ECO.END) began with culling all these
references (by 1995 up to ~ 2000 entries) for those that were specifically
related to Glacier Bay, the surrounding region, or SE Alaska. This
selection was then standardized; spelling mistakes were corrected,
criteria were set for the use of specific fields and/or reference types,
and standards for acronyms and abbreviations were implemented. Keywords
were also added to aid literature searches. The original bibliography
included unpublished park documents such as letters, field notes, and log
books, and the existence of these documents was verified before adding
them to GLBA_ECO.END. This was a particularly time consuming task as
literature at Park headdquarters exists in a number of places in the
building: the library, various different division's shelves and file
cabinets, and for old field notes and papers - boxes stored in the attic!
In the process, some exciting discoveries were made, and the resulting
reorganization of the Park's valuable literature resource will make it
much easier to handle requests for specific documents.
Creation of this Glacier Bay bibliography turned out to be an evolving
process as we met up with the inevitable discrepancies, and many initial
decisions about standardization and entry procedures had to be modified as
we went along. The final standards for making new entries to this database
are documented in the attached file "refentry.wp", which also
describes the various reference fields and how they are used. For example,
the field "Abstract" was changed to "Description" as
we had few genuine abstracts entered; most were really descriptive
narratives or short notes. Originally, the "Notes" field was
used to describe where in the Park Administration building a paper could
be found, but later we developed a code system to describe the locations
(see "refentry.wp" for this code). We eventually changed the
"Label" field to "Library Code" and entered the
appropriate initials here, including the code "GB" to identify
all the literature in GLBA_ECO.END.
Selection of those entries meeting the regional requirements for
inclusion in GLBA_ECO.END was occasionally problematic. Most were obvious
by the title, although some were distinguished by notes or descriptions
that accompanied the entries. In Doris' original bibliography she had
included a number of entries not readily identifiable as being related to
this region, but that may be, and she also included papers that were
written by researchers or writers who've spent lots of time in Glacier
Bay, although the particular paper may have had nothing to do with this
area. We chose to accept most of her decisions, especially if the paper
was authored by a notable Glacier Bay personage.
A decision was made to enter all federal government agency reports
under standard acronyms such as USNMFS for the National Marine Fisheries
Service, which makes the electronic versions of this bibliography much
more useable for scanning purposes. The full agency name and often the
office or division is entered in the "Institution" field. Users
of a printed version of the bibliography should be aware that only
selected fields will print out, and that the electronic version will
invariably contain more information about each reference (such as
keywords, notes, descriptions, etc).
Keywords were also a challenge as it was impossible to look up every
reference to figure out exactly what a publication was about. We had two
goals: 1) to make sure that all subject-related references had at least
one keyword that was identical for all; 2) to make sure that each
reference had at least 2 or 3 keywords that a layperson would guess at or
use to look up a subject. Keyword selection however is an art, not a
science, and those searching for keywords should try several possibilities
to ensure a complete selection. When searching a version of the
bibliography in Endnote, use the smallest "root" of the word.
Due to the construction of the program, for example, "whale"
will find "whales" but "whales" will not find
"whale" (the program will find a smaller word within a larger
but not the reverse). The list of keywords used is included in the
attachments.
Periodic updating will ensure that the most current literature becomes
available as soon as possible. The procedure for additions to the
bibliography is currently being worked out to ensure their timely
distribution to all users. An addendum will be forwarded as soon as
practicable describing how to access updates and changes directly.
Creation of this bibliography has been an exciting and rewarding
venture, revealing the breadth and scope of over a century of writings on
Glacier Bay. Perspectives span the range of human endeavor from hard
science to poetry, and the view represented seems almost infinite; whales
to hummingbirds, zooplankton to glaciers, rock and ice to flowers and
trees. It is a literature that accurately reflects the diverse and
inspiring nature of the region from which it springs.
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