The Compilation of an Earth Science Bibliography for the North Sea and Adjacent Areas

Downloaded from http://sp.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on September 25, 2021 The Compilation of an Earth Science Bibliography for the North Sea and Adjacent Areas D. J. McKay SUMMARY: This paper acts as an introduction to the bibliography of the North Sea and adjacent areas that is being compiled by the Exploration Division Library of Britoil. The paper gives an overview of Earth Science literature. Considerable attention is paid to the use of on-line information retrieval, which was the primary method of data collection for the bibliography. The bibliography itself will be available separately, and it is emphasised that it contains references only to publications that are publicly available. This paper is intended to act as an introduction tionaries, data compilations, encyclopaedias, to a bibliography of the North Sea and adjacent etc. However, the dividing line between primary regions that has been compiled within the and secondary literature is very indistinct and Exploration Library of Britoil Plc. Since the there exists a large amount of literature which is Exploration Library of the British National Oil partially both primary and secondary. Most Corporation was established in January 1978 a serials carry occasional review papers whilst positive need has been identified for an up-to- many monographs expand theories that have date and relatively complete bibliography for the not been previously reported. United Kingdom Continental Shelf (UKCS) and more recently for a bibliography of the adjacent Primary literature areas. Initial research into the literature indicated Primary earth science literature has two that very few bibliographies existed, the only characteristics which differ from other generally available ones being Brooks & Thomas disciplines. Much of the material is regional in (1974, 1977), Heybroek (1974) and Model nature, which results in a great deal of extremely (1966). valuable, but localized, information being In this paper the nature of earth science litera- published in little-known regional or society ture and the principles guiding the selection of journals. The Proceedings of the Ussher Society those references that have actually been included is an example, which publishes useful papers on in the Bibliography will be discussed. As this the southwest of England. may be read by 'non-information scientists' the The few obsolescence studies that have been methods of on-line information retrieval (OLIR) undertaken on earth science literature all reveal that were used as the principal method of infor- that the literature has in general a very long half- mation gathering will also be discussed. life; although this varies considerably from one geoscience to another--palaeontology naturally has a longer half-life than, say, plate tectonics. Earth science literature The explorationist is concerned with all types of primary literature either directly or indirectly: The literature of all scientific and technical disci- this paper, however, is not concerned with field plines may be divided into primary and secon- and laboratory results or drilling data; docu- dary forms. Primary literature includes the ment types, conference papers and theses need results of field work, laboratory investigation no introduction. Serial literature is more results, drilling and well data, conference complex, as it comprises magazines, journals, papers, serial literature, theses, etc. Secondary newsletters, transactions, etc. In all scientific literature presents the primary literature in a and technical fields much of the serial literature more convenient form and falls into two distinct may be considered ephemeral. Within the con- groups. The first group comprises biblio- text of the hydrocarbon industry this is graphies, abstracting and indexing publications especially true in the case of newletters and the and more recently computerized versions trade magazines, where much of the information thereof which give direct access to the primary is either truly ephemeral (useful at the time but literature; the second group represents those not later) or is later compiled into the secondary publications that reformat the information con- literature. tained in the primary literature, such publica- Accurate statistics relating to the 'publishing' tions include monographs, textbooks, dic- output of the Earth Sciences are difficult to 321 Downloaded from http://sp.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on September 25, 2021 322 D. J. McKay collect. Statistical analysis of OLIR searches the appropriate fees payable to the spinner and cannot be accurate as the major Earth Science in a few cases the fees payable to the producer databases have different policies relating to the before any access is allowed. An example of this references that they include. latter case is PETROLEUM ABSTRACTS. A However, it is possible for a few simple major advantage of OLIR, for small organisa- figures to be given. In 1978 the Science tions, is that apart from hardware, which Can be Reference Library published a list of geological rented, the cost of going online is minimal as serials taken by the Library, which contained most spinners only charge for time used and references to around 2300 titles. Wood (1973) references printed. A proportion of the charges states that 'information of interest to geoscien- made by spinners are in the form of royalties tists is to be found scattered through about 4000 collected by the spinner on behalf of the data- current titles'; in their user manual for base producer. [In 1982 GEOREF's connect Geoarchive (1981) Geosystems state that they time royalty was $24.00/hour whilst SDC scan over 5000 current serials whilst their Serial charged $105/hour and DIALOG $82/hour.] Title Abbreviation file contains references to Within the United Kingdom access is generally some 12 000 current and lapsed titles. available to six spinners: BLAISE, BRS, Monthly issues of the Bibliography and lndex DIALOG, ESA/IRS, INFOLINE and SDC. of Geology, the printed version of GEOREF, Contact points are listed in Appendix 1. The published since January 1981 contain an average number of available databases now exceeds 250 of 5158 citations, whilst the monthly updates to although obviously not all databases are avail- GEOARCHIVE for the same period have able on all spinners. Analysis of On-line averaged 4305 citations. Review's recent 'Databases online' listing (1982) revealed that of the 258 databases listed 192 were available on one spinner only, 40 were spun by Information gathering methods two and the remaining 26 by three or more. Available databases fall into three types: Although the literature of the Earth Sciences is bibliographic, directory and numeric--this estimated to be growing at an annual rate of paper is concerned solely with the bibliographic around 60 000 items a year advances in com- types. Most bibliographic databases consist of a puter technology and increasingly effective tele- citation sufficient to locate the full text of the communications have reduced the problems of original document whatever form it may take. A the 'information explosion' for the practising number of databases also contain abstracts, a Earth Scientist, by allowing for the development few contain full text of articles. It should be of sophisticated online information retrieval noted that records within any one database may systems. It is primarily by the application of this or may not have abstracts/full text depending on technique that the bibliography has been the producer's policy at the time of individual compiled. indexing; early records are less likely to contain abstracts/full text. Online information retrieval Despite the formidable number of available databases, the earth scientist need normally be The literature dealing with OLIR is increasing concerned with less than a dozen. The four at a considerable rate--as literature in all new major databases are GEOARCHIVE, fields of study does in the early days--and a GEOREF, PASCAL and TULSA; in addition detailed discussion of the fundamental prin- the following databases have been found to be ciples and methods of OLIR will not be pre- useful sources--COMPENDEX, ENERGY- sented here. However a general introduction LINE, GEOMECHANICS ABSTRACTS, may be of value to the 'non-specialist' earth INSPEC, NTIS and P/E NEWS. The addresses scientist since many academic institutions are of the database producers are given in Appendix still unaware of the full potential of the method. 2. In order to avoid confusion two definitions are essential: producer and spinner. A database Major Earth Science databases producer is the organisation that is responsible for the 'intellectual' creation and production of There are naturally a number of other an individual database, for instance GEOREF is machine-readable Earth Science databases but produced by the American Geological Institute. the four discussed below are both the most easily Spinners, or hosts, are organisations who main- accessible and the most generally used databases tain a number of databases on a central com- within the U.K. Nag (1980) mentions a further puter which may be accessed by other organisa- fourteen general and specialized databases for tions as long as they are prepared to contract for the earth sciences. The discussion that follows is Downloaded from http://sp.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on September 25, 2021 Compilation of an Earth Science Bibliography for the North Sea 323 intended to be a brief introduction to the four mineralogy/crystalography major

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