THE COLD REGIONS BIBLIOGRAPHY PROJECT: GEOSCIENCE TO TOURISM AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN

In 2000, the American Geological Institute began to migrate the Cold Regions Bibliography Project from its previous home at the Library of Congress to the American Geological Institute. The Project produces two bibliographies, the Antarctic Bibliography and the Bibliography on Cold Regions Science and Technology. These two bibliographies have covered the literature of the cold regions of the world since 1951 and include a wider range of materials for inclusion than the coverage of GeoRef, which is produced by AGI and is the premier geoscience abstracting and indexing database.

By the end of 2004, AGI will be concluding 4 ½ years of the compilation and has undertaken to keep the bibliographies up-to-date and as complete as possible. Government and Russian publications have traditionally comprised a significant portion of the coverage of the bibliographies. In 2000, the staff at AGI was covering approximately 40% of the journals and government publications needed for the project. The evolution of the selection process to include biology, chemistry, oceanography, meteorology and even tourism has included wider contacts with international organizations and an increase in the number of libraries and collaborators that AGI works with to obtain information. In addition to attempting to provide comprehensive coverage for the bibliographies, AGI has continued to add enhancements to the databases to make them as useful and as accessible as possible to diverse research communities.