EARTHQUAKES: A MEDIA FRENZY OR A GEOLOGIST'S DELIGHT: AN ANALYSIS OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATIONS OF FOUR MAJOR EARTHQUAKES OVER MAGNITUDE 6.0 ON THE RICHTER SCALE

An Earthquake close to a major city will immediately attract the attention of the news media, especially if it is over 6.0 and located in North America. Bibliographic citations for four earthquakes located in contrasting environments of a major city in North America, Northridge, California (M6.7, 1994), a Pacific rim city, Kobe, Japan (M7.2, 1995), and two remote desert communities, Landers, California (M7.5, 1992) and the Hector Mine (M7.1, 1999). References to the earthquakes occurring prior to 1999 were collected for five years from five bibliographic online databases. The databases were Current Contents, GeoRef, INSPEC, Magazine Index and Newspaper Index. Each event was analyzed for the speed of publication, type of publication, source of publication, and continuing research interest in the event. In addition, socio-economic factors were considered in terms of location, total damage, and disruption to communications.

The advent of the Web has also added a new dynamic resource for disseminating seismic information. Less than one percent of the references to the 1999 Hector Mine Earthquake are in the printed literature, but the Web has over 2,300 sites. This study was extended to review these sites emphasizing sustainability, cross linking, duplication, and the source and reliability of the information. In addition, the archiving potential of these sites was also considered for future information retrieval, analysis, and research for geoscientists.