Chapter-Iv Meteorological Information and Data
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CHAPTER-IV METEOROLOGICAL INFORMATION AND DATA RESOtjRCES IN INDIA Introduction Libraries have been playing a significant role in the dissem ination of information in a variety of fields. In fact the whole universe of knowledge is covered by one or other library. It is seen in the beginning of this work under the general intro duction, how the libraries have accepted the modern technology and started rendering improved services. In addition to performing the routine and ttaditional jobs of selecting, procuring, processing and circulating the books and journals, the librarians are assigned the job of providing the information to the users, in the words of S.R. Ranganathan, 'expeditiously and pinpointedly'. Ranganathan could recognise the importance of information service, which he equated with the so called reference service provided by the libraries in a traditional way. And this is reality, whatever the name may be, whether it is documentation service or reference service or information serv ice, the purpose or the aim of all of them is same-to provide information to the users precisely. Information is spread over in a variety of publications, books and journals, both popular and research oriented, and it will continue to be the principal means of providing meteorological informa tion. Dissertations and confererence proceedings are in cluded in this category. Another familiar form is the re- search reports or technical bulletins published by the India Meteorological Department and other government agencies or research organisations including university teaching departments. Maps, charts, satellite imageries and data publications are the important sources of meteorological information. Patents and other types of intellectual property have traditionally been important to the discipline. WL^ather codes, laws, standards, manuals of observations and observational networks, memoirs, records and official guidelines play an increasingly important role in meteorol ogy and climatology. The wide spread use of computers has pro duced a growing number of numeric and textural databases in tilectronic format containing everything from weather forecasts to agricultural yield reports. This chapter identifies principal sources of meteorological information-who produces them, what form they take, and where they come from and a brief discussion about thier contents. Llie^BIESa. Cdid dBCUlv^ES 6tiU LtiEQEtihllQii CEtJIBES Libraries, data archives and the information centres are the store houses for information. Their collections include books, periodicals or Journals, serials, handbooks, encyclopaedias, reports and manuals, data records, catalogues,•charts and maps, microforms, computer tapes, CD-ROM discs, manuscripts and many 178 more things. In Britain the National Meteorologial Library at Bracknell is probably the finest meteorological library in the 1 world (Ratcliffe , 1989). The library's author catalogue con tains about half a million cards. A-.subject bibliography has been maintained since 1935 and volumes covering some 200 sub jects are available. There is also a climatological bibliography which covers most of the countries of the world, in separate parts, and is available on microfiche. Articles can be searched based on author, subject, or region of the world as headings. This library is very rich in data holdings. It has also got a list of 600 rare books in the field. It has got a collection of colour slides and brochures. It has also got video and audio tapes. The library has acquired the computer ized system. The system called MOLARS (Meteorological Office Library Accession and Retrieval System) is available for on line searching hosted by the European Space Agency's Informa tion Retrieval Service. It contains about 130,000 books, journal articles, reports etc. About 10,000 titles are added every year. Universal Decimal Classification system has been used to classify the entries. In the United States of America the Library and Information Services Division of National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration at Rockville, Maryland, provides meteorological information services. The collection of books, journals, reports and data amount to over 170,000 volumes and cover all the fields of weather science since the 1870s. The archival library holds the Ratcliff, R.A.S. Meteorology and Climatology, Inf. Sources in earth sciences Ed. D.N. Wood, London, Bauker Saur, 1989, pp.420- 442. 170 collection going back 16th century. It has got a computerised list of new and old items. This library helps the American Meteorological Society in the preparation of Meteorloglcal and Geoastrophyslcal Abstracts. In India, the meteorological information is stored with the India Meteorological Department. It has got two main libraries one at the Headquarters at New Delhi located at Lodhi Road, and the other at Poona located at .Shivajinagar. Both the libraries have got huge collections of publications containing large numbers of books, journals, data collections, handbooks, encyclopaedia, reports, since India Meteorological Department itself is the producer of a number of reports, memoirs, codes, atlases, maps, etc. This library has been in existence for more than a hundred years as the India Meteorological Department has completed about 115 years. Besides its own collection of publications and the data held on manuscripts, the library houses the printed data compilations numbering in thousands, which are either acquired or received as gratis or on exchange basis from abroad. Since the department is a member of World Meteorological Organisation, it receives dnumber of publications on a complimentary basis. All the important publications published by the World Meteorological Organisation or the American Meteorological Society are available at the India Meteorological Department library. The efforts are already on to introduce such computer services. This library provides xeroxing facilities on 180 payment basis. The library at Pune is facing acute shortage of space and manpower. The library at the headquarters has got the facility for xeroxing. The Poona library has prepared a list of serials, which is now outdated. In the recent years no such catalogue is prepared or updated. The current awareness services or the selective dissemination of information also needs to be introduced. Inspite of all these acute shortages and short comings with very few numbers of staff, both the libraries are offering commendable services. Besides the India Meteorological Department's main li braries at Pune and Delhi, the library of Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, located at Pashan in Pune holds quite a number of publications in meteorology and its allied branches. Indian Institute of Geomagnetism", Bombay and the Indian Insti tute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, were the parts of the India Meteorological Department. The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology library, besides holding all the India Meteorologi cal Department publications which they get from that department on complimentary basis, has got a good collection of World Meteorological Organisation's publications and other books, atlases, maps and charts. Like India Meteorological Department library, it follows the Universal Decimal Classification System for classifying the publications received. It has got a good number of reprints. Though the total collection is not very large, say to the tune of 10 to 12 thousand publications, the 181 maintenance is good. The library has also got a drawing, reporgraphy, and publication unit. It caters to the need of the Institute's clientele quite appreciably. In the recent years, it has produced a computerised list of holdings. The Indian Institute of Geomagnetism and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, even though acquire and keep some of the publications in meteorology, they are not solely meteorological libraries. Since they are not under the scope of this study, they are not described fully. Also, the libraries of National Aeronautical Laboratory, Bangalore, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahemadabad, National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, National Institute of Oceanography, Panaji, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Trivandrum and the university libraries where meteorological courses are conducted, acquire and keep a lot of published materials in meteorology, REFERENCE WORK? M HETEQRQLOQY There are several reference books in n»eteqrology available in Indian libraries. These reference books' include handbooks, encyclopaedias, reports, textbooks, maps, charts and atlases. These books present meteorological data either in original or statistically reformed way. Maps and charts etc., present data either in compacted form or in symbols. Described below are some of the major reference publications in the subject of meteoro- 182 logy: Text books play an important role in providing basic knowledge in a particular subject. There are many types of books on every subject-the books which provide basic and advanced knowledge, and books of research value. Normally the text books serve the purpose of a particular course. There are thousands of books in meteorology which serve the purpose of students, researchers and general readers. It is a very diffi cult task to single out a particular book or books to be men tioned here. It may not be out of place to mention here the 15 volume book entitled World Survey of Climatology edited by H.E. Landsberg which covers the climates of the world. There are quite a number of books published by various publishers like M/s. Elsevier,