DELIVERING INFORMATION on A MOUNTAIN-TOP: VIRTUAL INFORMATION SERVICES AT CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK SCIENCE & LEARNING CENTER

The Crater Lake Science & Learning Center (SLC), in operation for four years, is one of a network of 20 National Park Service (NPS) Research Learning Centers (RLCs) created to connect researchers with parks, and scientific information with park managers and the public. Crater Lake SLC is one of the few RLCs that include a research library. According to the NPS’s 1999 Natural Resources Challenge Action Plan that led to the creation of RLCs in parks, information gained by scientific research in park must be disseminated as widely as possible: “Once this information is in our hands, we must share it widely, so that child and adult, amateur and professional can benefit” (Natural Resource Challenge: NPS Action Plan, 1999). To respond to this mandate, the SLC has embarked on several information services projects: the Crater Lake Digital Research Collection online library, and Crater Lake NP Bibliographies, an internal database using Reference Manager Network software.

Because the Crater Lake SLC’s facility is not accessible during the winter months, it is critical to provide virtual access to information held in the library. To answer this need, the Crater Lake Digital Research Collection (http://craterlakelib.oit.edu) was created in partnership with Oregon Institute of Technology and partially funded by a Library Services & Technology Act (LSTA) grant. Items in this collection are available to the general public and can be found through standard search engine queries as well as the collection’s own search functions. Since many items held in the SLC’s library were not suitable for inclusion in the CLDRC due to information sensitivity or copyright issues, the internal Crater Lake NP Bibliographies database was created so that park employees can access records of all items held in the library’s physical collection; some full-text access is provided via in-house scans of management documents or via links to NPS-subscribed databases such as JSTOR. Links to items held in the CLDRC are also provided, thereby making Crater Lake NP Bibliographies a one-stop shop for park employees. It is anticipated that the database developed at Crater Lake SLC will be compatible with products of the NPS Resource Information Services Division’s current efforts to develop federated searching across multiple information systems.