The Natural Resource Bibliography has been developed by the National Park Service (NPS) in order to catalog and manage natural resource-related information products pertaining to national parks. One of the 12 core NPS natural resource inventories, the bibliography centralizes a wide range of information and makes it readily available and easy to locate.

The data system supporting the Natural Resource Bibliography has undergone an extensive redesign, and in 2010 records in the previous system, known as NatureBib, were migrated to the NPS Data Store, which is part of the Integrated Resource Management Applications (IRMA).

The focus of these records is primarily on reports, articles, conference proceedings, theses and dissertations, gray literature, and other documents that contain information on park natural resources. In particular, the inventory captures references that may not be easily located via commercial on-line reference services (e.g., BIOSIS, JStor) or via public or academic libraries. In addition to standard bibliographic information, the IRMA-based Data Store permits the uploading of full-text versions of documents and publications, so that users can view or download documents corresponding to their search results.

As a general rule, the Natural Resource Bibliography is not intended to be a definitive bibliographic source for all literature available on a particular park or resource, nor is it intended for very general references (e.g., Birds of North America; Weeds of the West). Information that pertains to lands or resources adjacent to park units is appropriate for inclusion in if it has relevance to park management issues. Miscellaneous items such as maps or correspondence also have a place in the system, based upon their content.

Products

Access to records resulting from this inventory is available via the IRMA. No login or password is required. While full access to data is available to NPS users, a limited number of records is currently available to partners and the general public. This number will be steadily increasing as quality assurance steps are completed and sensitive data are protected.

Status

The Data Store in IRMA currently houses over 350,000 records. It also contains thousands of geospatial and other data sets. NPS staff across the country continue to add and update records on a daily basis.

More Information

• Email Margaret Beer, Inventory Coordinator - Phone: (970) 267-2183

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