LIS 522 Project - Process notes
In the initial stages of this project, I spoke with an environmental educator working in the field about domain definitions of ecology, natural history, environmental science. Mind you, that environmental educator is my mother, but hey, she was handy. Originally I wanted to examine the logic of how works related to ecology and environmental science seemed to be spread out throughout the guide, some under Ecology, others in industry-related sections. However, given time constraints, I chose to stick to evaluating sources for Ecology and Natural History as they are listed in the existing GRS.
I also spoke to a reference librarian at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, who was my teacher and mentor when I was an undergraduate. He had some helpful insight, encouraging me to seek out publication and resource information from professional organizations and recommending that I investigate the changes that some of the abstracting sources may have undergone as a result of aggregator and publisher buyouts. Indexes account for only a small portion of my sections, but it is worth looking into. He commented that the selection guidelines had a decidedly academic slant, probably because of the centennial edition.
To give myself some orientation, I started by examining the state of the existing listings. I did a UW catalog and Summit catalog search for the exisiting listings, noting where in the collection they were housed and how they were treated - reference, main stacks - and how many libraries in the Cascade Alliance had copies. I was also interested to see how The Evergreen State College collection looked. Evergreen is a small public college with an environmental science program. I was hoping to get the perspective of what from the last edition is still being used in a large university and a small (read: more tightly budgeted) college.
I then moved on to finding edition information and reviews for subsequent versions of the existing listings.
My next move after this is to research new reference works.
I also spoke to a reference librarian at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, who was my teacher and mentor when I was an undergraduate. He had some helpful insight, encouraging me to seek out publication and resource information from professional organizations and recommending that I investigate the changes that some of the abstracting sources may have undergone as a result of aggregator and publisher buyouts. Indexes account for only a small portion of my sections, but it is worth looking into. He commented that the selection guidelines had a decidedly academic slant, probably because of the centennial edition.
To give myself some orientation, I started by examining the state of the existing listings. I did a UW catalog and Summit catalog search for the exisiting listings, noting where in the collection they were housed and how they were treated - reference, main stacks - and how many libraries in the Cascade Alliance had copies. I was also interested to see how The Evergreen State College collection looked. Evergreen is a small public college with an environmental science program. I was hoping to get the perspective of what from the last edition is still being used in a large university and a small (read: more tightly budgeted) college.
I then moved on to finding edition information and reviews for subsequent versions of the existing listings.
My next move after this is to research new reference works.