Polar Libraries Colloquy Blog

24th Polar Libraries Colloquy, Boulder - cost and accommodations info

2011-12-20T14:01:00.000-05:00

We hope to see you at the 24th Colloquy in Boulder from June 11-14, 2012. The conference theme is Cold Regions: Pivot Points, Focal Points.

We will have a web site up early in 2012, but until then we wanted to provide some information on registration fees and accommodation to help you plan to attend. Please email us with any questions.

Approximate registration fees in U.S. dollars are as follows. There may be slight changes in the amounts as we get closer, but these are in the neighborhood:

Early registration: $300
Regular and on-site registration: $350
Single day - Early registration: $110
Single day - regular and on-site registration $135
Guest lunch: $15 per lunch
Guest banquet attendance: $70

Registration includes attendance at the sessions, breaks and lunches each day, a field trip, and the closing banquet at the beautiful Red Lion Inn near Boulder in the mountains.

We have arranged for a block of discounted rooms at the Boulder Inn, http://boulderinn.com/, which is a 15-minute walk from the conference venue on the University of Colorado-Boulder campus. The Boulder Inn has recently renovated its rooms and public spaces; some have views of the mountains. Rates are $104.00 plus tax per night for a king-sized bed and $114.00 plus tax per night for two queen-sized beds. You can make reservations with Ari Rubin by email (ari@boulderinn.com) or telephone (1-800-233-8469); mention the Colloquy to get the special rate. They are accepting reservations for the discounted rate from November 2011 until May 11, 2012.

We are looking into an optional excursion to Rocky Mountain National Park on Friday, June 15.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to plan for a great week in beautiful Colorado.

Conference organizers:
Gloria Hicks    National Snow & Ice Data Center ROCS    gloria.hicks@colorado.edu
Allaina Wallace    National Snow & Ice Data Center ROCS    allaina.wallace@colorado.edu
Shelly Sommer    Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research Library    shelly.sommer@colorado.edu

Call for papers - 24th Polar Libraries Colloquy, June 2012

2011-12-13T18:30:00.000-05:00

24th Polar Libraries Colloquy, June 11-14, 2012:
Cold Regions: Pivot Points, Focal Points

First call for submission of proposals for papers and panel sessions for the 24th Polar Libraries Colloquy (PLC24) to be held the 11th through 14th of June 2012 in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

The conference theme is Cold Regions: Pivot Points, Focal Points. Scientists, economists, and governments are focused on the evolving role of polar regions in world affairs. Polar libraries are evolving as well. What changes have you noticed in your collections, focus, or administration as global attention pivots on the poles? The Colloquy will feature a number of interesting presentations and panels, an experiment with an “unconference” session to address practical problems in polar libraries, and a field trip to one of the coldest labs in the world.

PLC24 welcomes all topics that apply to polar libraries or information. For instance:
    * How has your institution/collection/staff/mission/audience evolved?
    * Preservation of the cultural heritage - collection management of photographs, films and oral recordings
    * Has your research focus changed?
    * Outreach of libraries and archives - use of new technologies for teaching and public interactions
    * New ways of bringing your collections to the masses
    * New ways of bringing the masses to your collections
    * Adapting the library to 21st century needs
    * Data and metadata curation
    * Collaborations and exchanges
Or suggest your own topic for a session!

Submissions are invited for papers, panel discussions, and posters.

Paper presentations should address recently conducted research or projects, or content that advances the field of polar libraries or information. They are typically 20 minutes in length, followed by a 10-minute period for questions.

Panel discussions should focus on current topics; they are ordinarily an hour in length with three to five participants.

Poster presentations should address products or projects such as databases, web sites, or other information tools.

Your paper or panel discussion proposal should include:
- Your name and email address
- Coauthors or presenters (if applicable). Panel proposals should list a chair but do not need a complete list of panelists at this stage.
- Title
- Abstract of 500 words or less

PLEASE NOTE: Conference registration is required in order to present a paper. The PLC Steering Committee may be able to assist with some costs via the Wenger Award.

TIMELINE for paper or panel discussion proposals:

16 March 2012         Submissions deadline
13 April 2012         Acceptance notification
5 June 2012        Powerpoint and other visual presentations to be sent to conveners for loading on conference computers

Please submit all proposals to: library@nsidc.org

Proceedings of the conference will be published online. Paper authors will be expected to submit a final version of their papers for publication within six weeks after the conclusion of the conference.

We look forward to your participation.
- Gloria Hicks
- Allaina Wallace
- Shelly Sommer
PLC24 conveners

2010 William Mills Prize for Non-Fiction Polar Books

2010-07-06T10:29:00.002-04:00

The Polar Libraries Colloquy is pleased to announce the winner of the William Mills Prize for Non-Fiction Polar Books. Top prize went to Furs and Frontiers in the Far North: The Contest Among Native and Foreign Nations for the Bering Strait Fur Trade by John R. Bockstoce. The honors were announced at an awards ceremony on Monday June 14, 2010 in Bremerhaven, Germany at the biannual conference. More information about the prize, including the complete list of 2010 nominations, can be found on the PLC website.

Furs and Frontiers in the Far North is a comprehensive history of the native and maritime fur trade in Alaska during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. John Bockstoce is a well-known and respected Arctic historian and
archaeologist who has authored many books on Polar topics, such as the award-winning Whales, Ice and Men: The History of Whaling in the Western Arctic.

The Selection Committee would like to thank everyone who made a nomination this year. We had a stunning 12 nominations!

For more information, please contact Deborah Hicks, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta.

PLC Day 4 June 17

2010-06-18T16:31:00.004-04:00

Well, I was one of Sandy’s colleagues left on the patio at Lloyd's next to the hotel on Day 3, enjoying the wonderful evening sunshine, and the company of our Alaskan and Norwegian PLCers, joined later by several other colloquy participants. Little did I understand when I signed up to blog, that Thursday would be one of the most intense days, followed by the banquet and the outcry auction. I therefore apologize that this report is undoubetedly arriving AFTER the report for Day 5, but it simply couldn’t be helped… I had a lot to cover!

Day 4 (Thursday in Bremerhaven) began with Session 6: Preserving and Distributing Polar Research – Polar Libraries Ahead, moderated by Sandy Campbell of the University of Alberta Library. The first presentation was by Ross Goodwin of the ASTIS Bibliography, Arctic Institute of North America at the University of Calgary, who provided an account of the concept, design, development, current status and ongoing plans for the IPY 2007-2008 database. The database, developed as a consortium model using existing systems, is unique in that it collects social data and gray literature, allows for geographic as well as inter-disciplinary searching, is useful to a broad audience, and that it contributes records to ongoing databases at the same time as it builds the IPY 2007-2008 database. It is now at 4,000 records and counting. Some of the challenges are in capturing the data, but the most pressing issue is the sale of NISC to EBSCO publishing, which means that IPYPD is no longer a subset of AAR, even though it was built to use the infrastructure. The work on IPYPD has really just begun, the records will continue to be collected by CRBP, ASTIS, and SPRI but a long-term solution to the NISC situation must be found. A request was made for us all to add a link to the IPYPD to our websites to inform networks of its existence.

Our second speaker was Gloria Hicks of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre at the University of Boulder, Colorado, who talked about how e-tools and communciations infrastructures are being used for collaboration in key areas of science. In the same way, libraries are using e-tools to disseminate information and for communciation between librarians and users; websites are adapting e-strategies for distributing information through web streaming, RSS feeds, podcasts; social network fora, blogs, wikis, and chat applications are being used for science-based dialogues; and finally science is finding ways of using mobile applications. Of examples described was the ‘Science on a Sphere’ 3d program of NOAA (see http://sos.noaa.gov/).

Session 7, Giving (Open) Access to Research Data was moderated by Marcel Brannemann of the Alfred Wegener Institute and focused on a culture shift, whereby the scientific community is beginning to embrace open access, having been pushed to share ever more and various forms of materials (such as raw data). First up in this session as Hannes Grobe of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Beremerhaven who provided a overview of the birth and development of the PANGAEA Data Library for the Earth System—a georeferenced data library that offers a brilliant way to handle metadata as supplemental data to publications. From the view of the datacenter, data must be electronic (readable) to be useful and available. Next was a presentation by Jan Brase of the Technische Informationsbibliothek in Hannover,Germany who described DataCite--an international consortium for data citation. He described library catalogues as agents of global cooperation with local representation.

Our morning was rounded out with a Panel Discussion on the possible roles for the future library in digital curation, and how archives, libraries and data centres can interact more efficiently. The panel moderator was David Walton of the British Antarctic Survey and panelists included Heather Lane of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Shelly Sommer of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, Jan Brasse of the Technische Informationshbibliotek; and Hans Pfeiffenberger of the Alfred Wagener Institute. Panelists talked about differing views of library directors, library staff and researchers, the role of librarians in data management, how that role has evolved over the last 10-20 years, the challenges to accessing information and training needed for these evolving roles, the need for librarians to be invited to share in the planning stages of designing data management structures and systems and how their work should be called upon to inform the development of sharing policies. A lively open discussion ensued—a good deal of it focussed on whether the title ‘librarian’ should be changed to something more descriptive, or more inclusive of these new roles where they exist. Several conclusions were drawn; amongst them, the need to promote the skills and position of the Librarian to provide competencies and training in areas other than those conventionally attributed to them. Also discussed was the growing concept of ‘embedded librarians’ being a required part of the research process (e.g., in the medical sciences). There is a need to design and develop templates for data management and sharing, and various professionals and users need to be at the table to discuss needs and information required by various stakeholders, and to find a viable way to organize the data to make management as efficient and effective as possible. We need to be able to articulate various rules of access for e.g., the medical sciences (privacy standards) vs. social sciences (ethical standards) vs. biological sciences (data sharing) vs. applied sciences (patents protection) to form cohesive templates that will work across disciplines, institutions, jurisdiction (a monumental task!). Contraints, as always are funding, governance mechanisms, trans-national perspectives and differences, disciplinary restraints, and international rules. The most important conclusion was that the term Librarian is still appropriate--that people know what a librarian is, even if they might not know everything that a librarian does, and so we should… “Keep to the Brand”!

We returned after lunch to Session 8 which dealt with e-publications availability and access. This third session was moderated by Sandy Campbell.

The first talk was given by Sharon Tahirkheli of the American Geological Institute in Alexandria who addressed the impact of changes in the publishing industry on the Cold Regions Bibliography Project (CRBP), exploring whether new technologies and publishing norms such as electronic journals and e-books, digital repositories have made producing bibliographies more efficient or if the cost and effort expended adapting to the changing environments made it at all worthwhile. The bottom line is that while some efficiencies have been realized in some areas (staff time), they have been taken up in others (programming).

Next, new colloquy member Yoriko Hayakawa of the National Institute for Polar Research (NIPR) in Tokyo, Japan introduced us to the journals and reports produced by NIPR since 1957. The institute has moved to open access for all journals since 2003. Yoriko also spoke of the launch of ‘Polar Science; and a new special issue of MERGE, the new library, and the expedition reports collection, and provided a quick demo on how to access these materials.

The last talk in session 8 was dedicated to improving access to gray literature in polar libraries by Daria Carle of the University of Alaska Anchorage. The presentation was based on a comparative study of gray literature collections at the libraries of the Austalian Antarctic Division (AAD) in Tasmania, Australia, and the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) in Cambridge. The duplication expected in the two collections was surprising low (less than 6%). The project also looked at using RefWorks and RefShare to link the bibliographies to increase access. A full report of the study is available at http://www.consortialibrary.org/blogs/dcarle/sabbatical

After coffee was the PLC Business Meeting, the whole which will be reported in an upcoming issue of the Bulletin. Following the usual business of approving the minutes and the treasurer’s report, we took a few minutes to remember Geraldine (Nita) Cooke who passed away on 25 May 2010. As a founding member of the Northern Libraries Colloquy, Nita contributed a great deal to the PLC through the 1970s and 80s, and even into her retirement in the 1990s. She last attended the PLC meeting in Ottawa in 2004.
The business meeting then resumed with the election of officers; a regular member needs to be elected by e-ballot in the coming months. Sandy Campbell was recognized and thanked for her work over this term as Secretary to the Committee.
A good discussion was held on the impact of the sale of NISC to EBSCO (outlined by Ross Goodwin and Sharon Tahirkheli, respectively, in their presentations earlier in the day), and whether there was potential for action that PlC can take in this regard. It was decided that for the time being, the project team of the IPYPD would continue to try to work with EBSCO at finding a suitable solution.
Finally, PLC was presented with a proposal for an EU Arctic Information Centre or AIC network at the Arctic Centre of the Univerity of Lapland in Rovaniemi, with a request for support. The executive committee of PLC has considered the proposal, and advised the membership that, under the current structure and mandate, PLC cannot take part directly in the activities of this proposed EU Network (it cannot, and does not have the means to administer funding or any support or resources that might be provided for involvement in such a proposed), and therefore could not be a part of the bid. A member of the PLC can be funded as a consultant in the project, and so it would be more appropriate that AIC approach individual libraries (they have approached some). The discussion continued on ways the PLC might interact with and/or participate in the work of AIC in the future. Based on the above, a letter of response will be drafted and presented to the initiators of the proposal.
The next PLC 2012 will be in Boulder Colorado! (dates TBA).
Members are asked to send in vignettes, sound bites, re. PLC 2010 and contribute your news and articles for the PLC Bulletin!

The afternoon session closed at 5:30, which gave us a short break before dinner at 7 p.m. in the Captain’s lounge of the Sail City Hotel (sometimes referred to locally as ‘little Dubai’!). As we exited the elevator on the 19th floor, we were provided a glass of sparkling wine to enjoy while checking out the outstanding 360o view of Bremerhaven with the excellent sound of the Carlos Montoya jazz band from Bremen as a backdrop. A wonderful dinner (with a wide choice of salads, fish, pork, vegetable dishes, and desert) was shared and the jazz band resumed.

The outcry auction led by auctioneer par excellence David Walton was once again a highlight of the evening. Eight items reserved for the event were from all regions represented by participants in the 23rd colloquy, and all great prizes indeed: hand-painted hankerchiefs, a map umbrella with a polar projection, a litre of maple syrup, a Sami necklace made of silver, a handpainted silk tie, and an Alaskan ulu, which apparently is much more affordable than a shower curtain — just ask Fred Presteng who contributed the highest price to the purchase of the Ulu. The great news is that the silent raised enough to support 3 participants at the next colloquy!
Day 4 Correspondent,
Elaine Maloney

Friday at the PLC

2010-06-18T05:32:00.003-04:00

The last day of the Colloquy led off win three interesting sessions on collaborative projects.

Bridget Burke, University of Alaska Fairbanks, introduced us to Project Jukebox. This collection of oral history projects captures local knowledge and returns it to the community: "digital repatriation." Materials collected include audio files, transcripts, video clips, polar periodicals, and images. University and library staff travel to communities to give presentations, and elders travel to the library to identify and prioritize materials for digitization. Interactions with local communities are regulated by guidelines that require collaboration. An unintended consequence has been increased collaboration and trust between groups within the University library, who have been forced to work together.

Liisa Hallikainen, from the Arctic Centre library, spoke on a cooperative outreach effort of the library, the Arctic Centre's science center, the Rovaniemi Art Museum, the Provincial Museum of Lapland, and the science center of Metsahallitus (parks and forestry service), which are located around the same square. The organizations are working on a coordinated series of activities for visiting groups of 14-15 year old students around the theme of northern forestry. Students will perform some preliminary work in the classroom; also, all activities conform to the curriculum. The goal for the Arctic Centre Library is to help the students become more capable of using the library as an information source.

PLC Bremerhaven Weds. June 16, 2010

2010-06-16T15:03:00.009-04:00

I've left our colleagues over on the patio at Lloyd's next to the hotel, enjoying the wonderful evening sunshine. This is the same patio where they have the giant screen and are showing the World Cup Games regularly. Germany plays again Friday, and judging by the parties last Monday when they won the preliminary game, Friday will be a wild night.

Today was our Polar History day.
Our day began with Session 4: Polar Research in Historical Context, ably moderated by Elaine Maloney. Our first presentation was by Reinhard Krause of the Alfred Wegener Insitute (our host organization)on the history of the IPY idea. Using many photographs and illustrations of early documents, Dr. Krause first described the polar research landscape as it was in the years that led up to the first IPY and introduced us to the most important personalities. I hope that the slides for this presentation will be on the web-site. It was so rich with illustrations, that anyone viewing it, even without the text, will get a lot out of it.

Our second speaker was Hans Oerter, also from AWI. Dr. Oerter talked about the legacy of Alfred Wegener’s work and the research programs that have been built upon it. Much of the work has been done on the Greenland glaciers. Dr. Oerter pointed out to us that while Greenland is 81% glaciated, the unglaciated area of Greenland is larger than Germany. The other striking fact that we learned is that while the ice is very thick in the central part of Greenland, much of that area receives so little precipitation that it is actually classified as a desert.

Session 5, Polar History – Examples and Methods followed with Sharon Tahirkheli moderating.
Tatiana Fridman, one of our two new members from the Kola Science Centre in Apatity Russia, gave us a history of the Khibinskaya Mountain Station, where the First Polar Conference was held April 9-12, 1932. She also described for us her work on the Special Edition of “Important Milestones in the Development of Science in the Kola North”, an important work which was republished in 2009. It is really good to have our Russian colleagues here and to be able to learn about their information environments, both through formal presentations and informal conversations.

I think I saw Hilary Shibata last at the Rome conference. Hillary has a unique perspective having worked at the Scott Polar Research Institute for many years, and having also spent many years living in Japan. So she is perfectly positioned to bring us the story of Lt. Shirase and the Japanese Antarctic Expedition 1910 – 1912. This Expedit Reseach Instituteion has not received much attention in the popular English language press as have other Antarctic Expeditions of the same era. Our Japanese colleague, Yoriko Hayakawa (and it's wonderful to have a Japanese polar colleague here) tells me that Japanese school children are more likely to study later expeditions, as well.

Laura Kissel, of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, rounded out our morning with an interesting presentation on a program for building curriculum packages with high school teachers as a way of increasing use of the Byrd collection. By combining carefully constructed step-by-step lesson plans with carefully-selected primary materials from the Byrd collection, Laura and her team created a learning environment that would give many high school students their first with polar studies.

This ended our formal sessions for Wednesday. We headed over to the German Emigration Center for a group photograph and then lunch. After lunch, we were each given a card with an emigrant’s name and dates on the jacket. The Emigration Centre is designed to tell the story of the millions of people who left Europe through the port of Bremerhaven. At four points, we used our cards to activate an audio file which told us part of our emigrant’s story. My lady had been a Jewish doctor, who, with her husband was stripped of the right to practice and in 1939, was able to get to England, and eventually to New York. (My European colleagues may wish to skip the following babble).The most striking thing to me about this experience is that the story is that of emigration. Those of us who are non-indigenous people from the Americas and Australia know the same stories as immigration stories. We are the product of the people who made that trip and survived. These stories parallel our family histories, but we know them not as “they left”, but as “we arrived”.

From the historical to the modern, we next hopped on a bus for a tour of the harbor. This is a huge container port and cruise ship dock. As one of our colleagues commented, it does look like something out of Star Wars with its multitude of cranes, bridges and mobile container movers that look sort of like four-legged spiders with containers slung under their bellies. Of course they don’t walk, the legs are fixed and on wheels, so they drive around in a bee-hive of activity, collecting containers, driving over the spots or stacks where the containers are to be placed and then precisely lowering the containers so that they stack up like building blocks.

Kudos and thanks to Marcel, who has done a great job of giving us different ways of getting to know and understand Bemerhaven, the work of the Alfred Wegener Institute and the perspectives on things polar from this part of Europe.

Cheers from Bremerhaven. Sandy Campbell

PLC 23 Day 2

2010-06-15T18:12:00.004-04:00

Day two of the Colloquy began with a guided tour of Klimahaus Bremerhaven 8˚ Ost, a new innovative permanent exhibition devoted to climate and climate change. Dr. Susanne Nawrath, Klimahaus Exhibition Manager, gave the group a brief introduction the Centre. This was followed by a guided tour of the main exhibits, which include "Journey", "Elements", "Perspectives" and "Opportunities." The exhibits simulate the climate through a series of interactive displays. As we move throught the exhibits, we experience the climatic differences around the earth and learn about the many factors affecting climate and climate change. Visiting the Klimahaus was truly a unique experience.

Following the tour, we shifted gears from changes in the weather to changes affecting libraries. Lindsay Johnston (University of Alberta) presented a paper entitled "The Melting and Disappearance of Circumpolar Born Digital Grey Literature." She examined important issues related to identifying, capturing and disseminating "born digital" grey literature. Elaine Maloney (Canadian Circumpolar Institute) also spoke of collaborative e-projects between the University and the Circumpolar Institute. Participants broke into groups to discuss issues related to collaboration and the preservation of this type of literature, with a view of a possible e-archiving strategy for Circumpolar literature.

In the afternoon we shifted gears when Jan-Anders Diesen, Film historian (Lillehammer University College, Norway) presented a fascinating look at the very first silent films made of polar expeditions in both the North and South Poles. The presentation examined the earliest silent films made on expeditions led by Fiala, Wellman, Wilkins, Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton, Byrd and others. Professor Diesen brought this rare footage to life and we were delighted to hear the many anecdotes he shared with us about the films and their background.

Our host Marcel Brannemann (AWI, Bremerhaven) then presented two short film clips of relatively recent arctic expeditions. This was followed by the final clip, a humorous entry called the "Quest for the Golden Roll". This five-minute clip was the winning entry of the 48 hr Antarctic film festival submitted by BAS researchers at the Rothera Research Station, Antarctica.

The last two papers of the day shifted gears back to important issues facing polar librarians today, as more and more libraries have to compete with the perception that libraries are no longer as important to research as they once were. Alternate sources of information, such as the Internet (Google, etc.) can make it harder to make the case for the role of the library.

Jo Milton of the British Antartic Survey presented us with the results of a recent user survey she undertook in her organization. The goal of the survey was to understand the patterns of information use by her primary user group, namely polar scientists working at the BAS. As polar research becomes increasingly more collaborative and mulitdisciplinary it is important to understand how scientists in different disciplines use and view the library, as well as in how they percieve the information options available to them. Jo also looked at many of the issues facing her library in the context of reorganization and dwindling resources.

Shelly Sommer (Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder) presented a wide-ranging paper on how large-scale trends such as Web 2.0 are affecting libraries and librarians. Shelly surveyed varous Web 2.0 tools suchs as Wikis, RSS feeds, file sharing sites, blogs, sites such as Facebook and Twitter and provided examples of how these tools are changing the way people look at and share information.

Also examined were issues of data decoupling. Research data is treated separately from publications and there are often no clear policies regarding data and data management. Shelly ended her presentation with a look at the changing role of librarians and libraries.

Pierre Beaudreau (Departmental Library, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada)

PLC 23 Day 1

2010-06-14T14:46:00.001-04:00

Greetings from Bremerhaven and PLC 23! Our conference is being held in the Klimahaus, Bremerhaven's newest tourist attraction. But more about that tomorrow – when we get a guided tour of the facility. Today, we were welcomed to Bremerhaven from Dr. Karin Lochte, the director of the AWI, as well as the Mayor of Bremerhaven (can someone help me out with his name?). We got a nice overview of the research conducted by the AWI as well as the interesting details about the history of the city of Bremerhaven. After a brief introduction and welcome from PLC chair Heather Lane, we were treated to two key note speakers. The first was a very interesting talk from Bernhard Diekmann, of AWI, Potsdam. He gave a very informative presentation about permafrost and climate change, including the definition of permafrost and the impacts of the warming in the Arctic on permafrost. Our next keynote speaker was Daniel Steinhage, also of the AWI. Daniel's talk was called, "Airborne research in cool regions," and focused on the research aircraft of the AWI. He went over the details of the various aircraft used by the AWI over time and the purpose and importance of the aircraft in polar research.

After a very generous luncheon, Session I began with a talk by David Walton called, "Antarctic Bibliographies: listing the literature of a continent." David summarized a number of the various bibliographies of Antarctica, with commentary about the good ones, bad ones and those in between. David rightly points out that many young scientists (and other researchers) won't use any materials that they cannot pull up on their computer screens. As librarians, we know that lots of good material exists that is not accessible online! The second talk of Session I was a fascinating overview of the "Breitfuss Polar Archives at SPRI: its acquisition and integration into the SPRI collection," by Isabella Warren. She gave us a good biographical sketch of the life of Breitfuss, as well as the interesting path taken to finally get the collection of materials to SPRI. Consisting of books, pamphlets and maps, Isabella is pulling together a comprehensive list of the collection, as well as working to make decisions about the best way to preserve the materials and make them accessible. Finally, Session I ended with a talk from Fred Presteng and the experience he had in digitizing the publications of the Norwegian Polar Institute. Fred explained that this is a work in progress, with 84 of 400 issues scanned so far. He also described the perils and pitfalls of digital projects. Though the scanning was outsourced to big companies, there have been a number of quality issues. In addition, Fred pointed out the need for the same technical platform to be used by both the vendor and the library. He also gave some very good suggestions and tips to librarians contemplating digital projects, including suggested file sizes for best quality, yet still keeping file sizes manageable, and advising librarians to do a little research about scanning before embarking on an outsourced scanning project, as this will make communications with vendors much easier. Day one's session ended with the announcement of the William Mills Book Prize. Gloria Hicks briefly explained the process by which the book was selected, and then announced the winner: Furs and Frontiers of the Far North: the contest among native and foreign nations for the Bering Strait fur trade, by John Bockstoce. Graciously accepting the award on the author's behalf was David Walton.

-Laura Kissel, Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program, OSU

Canada to host Arctic summit in March

2010-03-08T12:08:00.002-05:00

Canada to host Arctic summit in March

Read the article:

http://www2.canada.com/scripts/story.html?id=2516997

Arctic sea ice vanishing faster than 'our most pessimistic models': researcher

2010-03-08T11:58:00.002-05:00

Arctic sea ice vanishing faster than 'our most pessimistic models': researcher

Read the article:

http://www.canada.com/technology/Arctic+vanishing+fast+researcher/2532081/story.html

Arctic warming will cost world billions: Pew study

2010-03-08T11:53:00.003-05:00

Climate warming in the Arctic will cost the global economy billions of dollars in 2010 alone, according to a study by the U.S.-based Pew Environment Group released Friday.

Read more:

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/02/05/pew-arctic-warming-cost.html

Read the full report, Arctic Treasure: Global Assets Melting Away, at:

http://oceansnorth.org/arctic-treasure

2010 William Mills Prize for Non-Fiction Polar Books - call for nominations

2010-01-27T12:58:00.003-05:00

The committee for the William Mills Prize for Non-Fiction Polar Books is seeking nominations for the 2010 Prize. William Mills Prize for Non-Fiction Polar Books was established in memory of William Mills, a core member of Polar Libraries Colloquy during its formative years, consummate polar librarian and author. The prize was first awarded in 2006.

The book prize honors the best Arctic or Antarctic nonfiction books published throughout the world (nomination details below). The prize consists of $300 US, certificates for the author and publisher, and the right to use the William Mills Prize logo when advertising the winning book.
Winning titles are announced on pollib-L, the Colloquy web site, the Polar Libraries Bulletin and other appropriate publications.

More information about the award, including past nominees and winners, is available on the Polar Libraries Colloquy web site at http://arcticcentre.ulapland.fi/polarweb/plc/mills.asp.

*The deadline for submission is March 31, 2010.*

Qualifications for Nomination:
1. The book must be nonfiction, about the Arctic or Antarctic.
2. The book may be any type of substantive work of nonfiction, or reference resource. Textbooks, anthologies, edited works, and other small-scale efforts will not be considered unless they are truly outstanding contributions to the polar literature.
3. The book must have been published for the first time between the dates of the last Colloquy and the December 31st before the next Colloquy. Re-releases, translations of older materials, and updated editions will not be eligible. The publication timeframe for the 2010 award is July 2008 to December 2009.
4. The official language of the Colloquy is English. For this reason books must be published in an English language version to be eligible.

*Submissions must include the following information:*
Book title
Author(s)/Corporate author(s)
Place of publication
Publisher
Date of Publication (must be between July 2008 and December 2009)
Name and contact information of person nominating the book

Additional information such as a book summary, statement of the book's impact, book reviews, etc. would be very welcome but are not mandatory. Please send nominations to the attention of Deborah Hicks by March 31st, 2010.

By email:
Deborah.R.Hicks@gmail.com

Or, mail:
P.O. Box 4556
Edmonton, AB
T6E 5G4
Canada

Celebrating Bartlett 2009

2009-07-13T08:40:00.002-04:00

Captain Bob Bartlett

World-renowned Arctic explorer. Icon of North American history. From his success on the famed 1909 Peary Polar expedition to his countless Far North adventures, Bartlett is one of the true heroes of the 20th century. Celebrating Bartlett 2009 is a program of events and projects to bring Bartlett’s story to new generations. It will shine light on the legacy of the man whose perseverance and strength symbolize the spirit of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Join us for Celebrating Bartlett 2009 and travel back to a time of firsts, a time of discovery – the time of Captain Bob Bartlett.

More info.

Posted by: Elise Chodat, Bibliographic Systems Librarian, INAC, Ottawa

1840 Globe

2009-07-13T08:34:00.003-04:00

Globe from 1840 showing Canadian discoveries up for auction
By Randy Boswell , Canwest News ServiceJuly 4, 2009

It was commissioned in 1840 for an Oxford University library, a $75 globe depicting "the present state of the known world" just three years after a young Queen Victoria had taken the throne.

But when the metre-wide, 169-year-old relic is auctioned July 7 in London, it's expected to fetch a whopping $50,000 - largely because of a map-maker's notations along Canada's northern coastline that suggest the globe may be a one-of-a-kind cartographic creation.

More info

Posted by: Elise Chodat, Bibliographic Systems Librarian, INAC, Ottawa

Canada and the U.K. Team Together on Polar Research

2009-02-17T15:18:00.004-05:00

Ottawa, Ontario (February 11, 2009) - The Honourable Chuck Strahl, Canada’s Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, and Right Honourable Lord Paul Drayson, the United Kingdom’s Minister of State for Science and Innovation, are pleased to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to pursue collaboration on polar research activities.
Canada and the UK have increased interest in scientific understanding of the polar regions. This MOU enables both countries to increase scientific cooperation in all aspects of polar research, including scientific exchanges and the sharing of polar infrastructure and logistical support.

For more information see:

http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ai/mr/nr/j-a2009/nr000000183-eng.asp

Posted by:

Pierre Beaudreau
Manager, Public Enquiries Contact Centre
Departmental Library
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada

Canada's Arctic ice shelves break apart, drift away

2008-09-04T11:00:00.001-04:00

Wed Sep 3, 1:13 PM

OTTAWA (AFP) - Two ice shelves in Canada's far north have lost massive sections since August while a third ice shelf now is adrift in the Arctic Ocean, said researchers Wednesday who blamed climate change.

The entire 50 square-kilometer (19 square-mile) Markham Ice Shelf off the coast of Ellesmere Island broke away in early August and is now adrift, while two sections of the nearby Serson Ice Shelf detached, reducing its mass by 60 percent or 122 square kilometers (47 square miles).

Read more...

Posted by:

Elise Chodat
Bibliographic Systems Librarian
INAC

Announcement: Pipelines in Permafrost and Freezing Ground, 2nd ed.

2008-09-04T10:14:00.003-04:00

New Release
Pipelines in Permafrost and Freezing Ground, Engineering Resource Library and Database Indexes
The timely release of the fourteen-volume book set provides engineers and geoscientists working in universities, research institutes, corporations, governments and regulatory bodies with an in-depth examination of the interdependence between cold climate infrastructure and the behaviour of freezing soils and permafrost-affected soils.

The Engineering Resource Library provides the user with additional insights into intricate concepts such as
• Soil strain and soil creep
• Hydrological and micromorphological properties
• Frost heave and frost bulb growth
• Thaw consolidation and pipeline relaxation
• Pressure in freezing soils and permafrost affected soils
• Bending stresses in buried pipelines
• Uplift resistance of pipelines in permafrost

The Library may be equipped with a suite of program modules and databases.

For further informationplease contact Dr. White - by email white@permafrost.ca or by phone at 613-746-4422.

Permafrost Environmental Consulting Inc.
27 Lindenlea Road, Suite 103, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1M 1A9

***
Posted by:

Elise Chodat
Bibliographic Systems Librarian
INAC

Contaminants in Permafrost and Freezing Ground - announcement

2008-09-03T14:16:00.002-04:00

Contaminants in Permafrost and Freezing Ground Environmental Resource Library
By Thomas L. White

The timely release of the twelve-volume book set and CD-ROM containing Dr. White’s Contaminated Arctic Soils Database provides engineers and geoscientists working in universities, research institutes, corporations , government and regulatory bodies with the tools necessary to carry out an in-depth examination of the behaviour of contaminants in freezing soils and permafrost-affected soils.

Read more... [PDF, 695 Kb]

Annotated bibliography - Trent University

2008-08-25T14:31:00.002-04:00

An Annotated Bibliography of Material Related to the Polar and
Arctic Regions in the Special Collections of the Trent University Library (by Janice Millard)

"The Trent University Archives holds a wealth of wonderful published
material related to the Polar and Arctic Regions in its Special
Collections. They have been surveyed and an annotated bibliography
of materials in the collection as of 2007 has been created."
...

"Areas of concentration are the nineteenth and early twentieth century explorations to find the Northwest Passege and the North Pole as well as the exploration of Greenland and parts of Russia."

http://www.trentu.ca/admin/library/documents/polarbibliography2007.pdf [513k]

Posted by:

Elise Chodat
Bibliographic Systems Librarian
INAC

On dangerously thin ice

2008-07-31T11:29:00.002-04:00

When environmental biologist and film director Jean Lemire led a film crew to Antarctica, his plan was to document climate change. Instead, he tells Guy Dixon, he and his crew sailed into a potential death trap. Full story...

GUY DIXON, Globe and Mail, July 31, 2008

Posted by

Elise Chodat,

Bibliographic Systems Librarian,

INAC

Energy up North

2008-07-28T10:48:00.000-04:00

OIL AND GAS IN THE ARCTIC: ONE-THIRD OF THE WORLD'S PROVEN RESERVES
The energy up there -
According to the U.S. Geological Service, about 412 billion barrels of oil are trapped beneath the pack ice of the Arctic. Precisely who owns the reserves is another question

From theGlobeandMail.com, ReportonBusiness.com, July 24, 2008

Posted by:

Elise Chodat
Bibliographic Systems Librarian
INAC

Two New Books About Admiral Byrd and Stuart Paine

2008-07-24T15:46:00.007-04:00

New Books Published by the University of Missouri Press

The University of Missouri Press has published two books that might be of interest to some of our patrons. One title published in 2007 is: Footsteps on the Ice: the Antarctic Diaries of Stuart D. Paine, Second Byrd Expedition (ISBN: 978-0-8262-1741-7). Stuart Paine was a dog driver, radio operator and navigator on Byrd’s Second Antarctic Expedition. It is edited by Merlyn L. Paine, the daughter of Stuart Paine. http://press.umsystem.edu/spring2007/paine.htm

The other book is an extensive biography about Admiral Richard E. Byrd and it has just recently been published: Explorer: The Life of Richard E. Byrd, by Lisle Rose (ISBN: 978-0-8262-1782-0). Mr. Rose conducted research in the Byrd Papers at The Ohio State University Archives and the Archival Program provided many of the photographs used throughout the book. http://press.umsystem.edu/spring2008/rose.htm

submitted by

Lynn Lay

Goldthwait Polar Library
Byrd Polar Research Center
The Ohio State University

Broadband Internet in Nunavut

2008-07-22T14:36:00.002-04:00

"Hotspot in a cold spot"
For $60 a month, residents of Nunavut's remote communities can stay connected to the outside world with satellite broadband.

Posted by
Elise Chodat,
Bibliographic Systems Librarian,
INAC

Next Polar Libraries Colloquy (PLC) 2010 at Bremerhaven, Germany

2008-07-04T02:08:00.003-04:00

At the 22nd PLC Conference (June 2 - 6, 2008) in Edmonton, AB, Canada the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Bremerhaven, Germany was selected as the site for the next PLC Conference in June 2010.

Marcel Brannemann (AWI)

###

More information about AWI: http://www.awi.de/en/

More information about Bremerhaven:

http://www.bremerhaven-touristik.de/bremerhaven-tourism/index_eng.html

Credits: BIS Touristik Bremerhaven, Germany

The 'Havenwelten' Bremerhaven - Vision of the 'Museum Mile', March 2009.
lower right: German Emigration Center
center: Klimahaus 8° East (under construction) - Atlantic Sail City Hotel

Announcing - Settlers on the Edge by Niobe Thompson

2008-07-02T12:22:00.002-04:00

Settlers on the Edge : Identity and Modernization on Russia's Arctic Frontier

A new book by Niobe Thompson, who presented two documentaires at this year's Polar Libraries Colloquy in Edmonton, has been released by UBC Press.

Based on extensive research in the Arctic Russian region of Chukotka, Settlers on the Edge is the first English-language account of settler life anywhere in the circumpolar north to appear since Robert Paine's The White Arctic (1977), and the first to explore the experiences of Soviet-era migrants to the far north. Niobe Thompson describes the remarkable transformation of a population once dedicated to establishing colonial power on a northern frontier into a rooted community of locals now resisting a renewed colonial project. He also provides unique insights into the future of identity politics in the Arctic, the role of resource capital and the oligarchs in the Russian provinces, and the fundamental human questions of belonging and transience. - UBC Press web site.

Details:
ISBN: 9780774814676
$85.00 Hardcover
304 Pages

For more information about the book and ordering information, see: http://www.ubcpress.ca/search/title_book.asp?BookID=299172237

Posted by Elise Chodat, Bibliographic Systems Library, INAC for Elaine Maloney.

New documentary about Antarctica

2008-06-20T08:09:00.001-04:00

Review of - Encounters at the End of the World (2008). by Werner Herzog.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20206283,00.html
from Entertainment Weekly magazine.

Posted by:

Elise Chodat
Bibliographic Systems Librarian
INAC Library

22nd Polar Libraries Colloquy - Friday, June 6, 2008

2008-06-07T11:30:00.034-04:00

How the colloquy hours this week have flown by this week with interesting presentations. Day 5 was no exception.

The morning plenary session 10 began with a presentation by John Gilbert a former radio operator and arctic veteran who has been instrumental in collecting photographs, memorabila and documents from those who have served in the joint (Canada & US) weather stations. Edward Atkinson, Nunavut Archives acquired this their first digital collection and Steve Schafer, Athabasca University Library, is working to provide access to the collection in ContentDM. This collaborative project is called JAWS - Joint Arctic Weather Stations.

Shelly Sommers (Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research/INSTARR) a solo librarian, described how a joint exhibit with neighbour library - National Snow and Ice Data Centre/NSIDC resulted in new connections and interest with new users. An inspired storyteller, information scavenger hunt and database searches linked to the contents of the exhibit were all part of the event.

Each year the PLC Colloquy group photograph is taken. The weather cooperated and before the morning coffee break we headed outside the Telus Centre for a photoshoot.

Plenary session 11 contained two papers by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). David Walton introduced us to his bibliometric study of trends in science publications. Using data from Web of Science and the publications list of the BAS, David analyzed the production by countries who take part in antarctic research and compared their output and citation rates from the 1970s to the present across subject disciplines. This work will be continued using the Antarctic Bibliography.

David Hyett, Head of Information and Records Management, described the project to create an open archive repository for the scientists who are funded by NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) using ePrint software. All scientific output funded by NERC must be deposited in an OAI archive. The NORA archive provides this depository for postprints and grey literature. Authors self deposit and verify publisher permissions in SHERPA's Romeo database http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php NORA can be viewed at http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/

After lunch, plenary session 12 focused on media. Lindsay Johnston (University of Alberta Library) reported on an ongoing study to analyze the media portrayal of the welfare of polar bears in North American newspapers. The research team used Survey Monkey for their content coding and as the librarian on the project team Lindsay was instrumental in providing search strategies and information resources for the work.

Mary Katherine Jones (University of Tromso) reviewed the international media coverage of the 2007 Arktika Russian expedition to the North Pole. This expedition planted a Russian flag on the seabed and claimed the Arctic as Russian.

David Walton began the PLC closing session with a personal summary of the week's events. Having fun, meeting old friends, making new ones and exchanging information are at the heart of the PLC Colloquy. Many new groups and project initiaives have begun at this meeting and the challenge is to continue with these collaborative efforts in the years until the next colloquy.

PLC Steering Committee group photo.

The next PLC will be held in 2010 in Bremerhaven, Germany. Marcel Brannerman provided an overview of the conference venue and places the visit in Bremerhaven.

Heather Lane, incoming PLC President summarized on behalf of all attendees their appreciation of Sandy Campbell and her team's wonderful arrangements and organization of the PLC Colloquy.

The day ended with dinner and the outcry auction. Auctioneer David Walton amused and engaged diners, and all items were sold to the highest bidder amid laughter and good company.

Posted by Sharon Rankin, McGill University Library, June 7th, 2008.

22nd Polar Libraries Colloquy - Thursday, June 5, 2008

2008-06-06T14:11:00.005-04:00

Several talks focused on the North today. Bjorn Skancke talked about NORAS, which is a planned service that provides access to open scholarly documents that are geographically defined in the North, rather than by subject. Sandy Campbell discussed how they define "The North" for their Canadian Circumpolar Collection at the University of Alberta. Peter Geller and Stan Gardner talked about how a regional library system was being built in Northern Manitoba for the University College of the North. Members from the University of the Arctic instructors talked about their program and some of the problems that are encountering with getting library materials to their students. As a partner with the University of the Arctic, the PLC has an important role to play in helping with this dilemma. We also heard about the Caninuit Database from Sharon Rankin.

There was a panel discussion about the Future of Polar Libraries and an lively discussion took place about our role in this ever changing environment. Phil Cronenwett also talked to us about the spiraling costs of polar literature and made some suggestions on how we as collectors of polar literature for our libraries could cope with this situation.

It's official - Marcel Branneman from the Alfred Wegener Institute extended an invitation to the PLC for 2010 and so it will be in Bremerhaven, Germany then. Birit Jakobsen from UNIS in Norway also extended an invitation for us to travel to Svalbard in 2010. Everyone agreed that Svalbard would be a fantastic locale for the PLC, but there were reservations about the costs of air travel and fuel and the fear that the costs would only escalate rather than remain the same or be less. The Steering Committee felt that many of the members would not be able to travel to Svalbard because of the costs.

Also at the PLC Business Meeting, Daria requested contributions from the membership and there were several panel discussions held at this PLC, including the one today about the Future of Polar Libraries. David Walton, the chair of that session, suggested that those on the panel write up something from their own perspective to be included in an issue of the Bulletin.

New steering committee members added to the PLC are: Shelly Sommer from INSTAAR, Ross Goodwin from ASTIS and Marcel Branneman from Alfred Wegener Institute.

Everyone was given the opportunity to sign up to be on a committee that they were most interested in - I signed up for the committee for making a union list of polar digital projects or initiatives. We will meet after the formal conclusion of the PLC on Friday to discuss how we should get started. Others that are not at the meeting are welcome to join the committee and probably any other committee that is organizing. Look for information about the committees in the Bulletin or contact Judy Triplehorn who is the keeper of the lists of volunteers.

Lynn Lay

22nd Polar Libraries Colloquy - Wednesday, June 4, 2008

2008-06-05T00:03:00.004-04:00

The third day of the Colloquy began with a joint PLC/University of the Arctic session on the IPY. Elena Sparrow, Director of the University of the Arctic IPY Coordination Office provided us with details on the wide range of IPY projects that the University is involved in. David Hik, University of Alberta, provided an overview of the IPY in Canada and Scott Forrest, UArctic Secretariat, demonstrated the UArctic Atlas.

The PLC then had a breakout session on IPY beginning with a report by Ross Goodwin on the progress being made on the International Polar Year Publications Database, a collaboration of five organizations attempting to track all of the publications that result from the IPY. To date about 630 IPY publications have been identified and any researchers or librarians that know of publications resulting from the IPY are encouraged to report the publications to one of the collaborators at http://biblioline.nisc.com/ipy/html/report.htm.

Reports on the IPY at various organizations followed: Susan Olmsted from NSF reported on the NSF IPY web site, Anna Fiolek from NOAA demonstrated some of the polar videoclips being made available on the NOAA website, and Berit Jakobsen reviewed the Norwegian IPY website.

The afternoon was devoted to a pleasant stroll through Fort Edmonton Park where we walked through history. The Park represents four distinct time periods: a fur trading post, 1885, 1905 and 1920.

After our return to Edmonton, we joined the University of the Arctic and celebrated with dinner and dancing at the Oldtimer’s Memorial Cabin

Sharon Tahirkheli, American Geological Institute

22nd Polar Libraries Colloquy - Tuesday, June 3, 2008

2008-06-03T18:42:00.004-04:00

The second day of the PLC in Edmonton started with a wonderful performance by an aboriginal trio by the name of Asani. Their beautiful songs were a great start of a day with a very full program.

The keynote speech this day was by the Cree author Larry Loyie and his partner Constance Brissenden. Larry is a writer of children's fiction books, and told us about the challenges of being an aboriginal writer and getting your writings published.

The first session started with Lia Ruttan's talk on Locating literature. When working in the area of northern history, there is a great difference in the way Western literature documents the events in the North, and the way the local people experience their own history. The writings of explorers and adventurers are often based on very short stays. The indigenous people's history on the other hand is passed on in an oral tradition. The challenge is to get the oral history recorded in a way, where it is a partnership created to re-story the past in an ethical way.

Next Rae-Lynne Aramburo told us about book publishing in Nunavut. There are but four publishers in Nunavut, of which one has now been dissolved. Most publishing is concerned with teaching materials in Inuktitut, mostly as bilingual English/Inuktitut publications. As the publishers are non-commercial and funding is a problem, the challenge is the distribution of these materials.

After lunch session two started with Sharon Tahirkheli and her talk on: Do we really need the Cold Regions Bibliography Project when we have web-based search engines? A vey relevant question as many students and researchers are prone to think the they get all the necessary information through Google Scholar. Sharon had compared different searches in CRBP and Google, and although Google came out with quite good results in some of these searches, the CRBP proves to be more focused. This is based on a well defined coverage and a controlled vocabulary.

Arto Vitikka then told us about information and database management in the Barents region. The Arctic Center in Rovaniemi maintains the portal http://www.barentsinfo.org/. New web technologies are being introduced and Arto told us about semantic web technology, which makes contents of the information understandable and processable by machines.

Session three started with Lynn Lay's talk about the Byrd Polar Research Centre's project of collecting images and documentation from researchers at the center. It proved not to be that easy to get researchers to take the time to collect and hand over their archival material. The idea is to create a database which will document the history of the Byrd Center, and make available the scientific outcomes.

The session concluded with Heather Lane's talk on: Beyond text - using library and archival collections at the SPRI to contextualise the visual image. SPRI has launched a project of preserving historic polar images called the Freeze frame project. 20.000 images from SPRI's historical collection together with manuscript materials and photographs from the museum collection are added to a database. The aim is to promote the understanding of polar history. Another aim is to preserve the very rare and fragile materials.

This was a short summary of the day's session. In half an hour we shall be joining the University of the Arctic attendants for an Icebreaker at the Timms Center.

Vibeke Sloth Jakobsen, Danish Polar Center

22nd Polar Libraries Colloquy - Monday, June 2, 2008

2008-06-02T20:49:00.005-04:00

When I first woke up this morning, I admit I had second thoughts about volunteering to take Monday as my day to blog about the Polar Libraries Colloquy. My flight into Edmonton didn't arrive until late on Sunday night, so I was feeling a little too sleep-deprived to focus on the day's events with enough attention to record it all. Fortunately though, I picked a great day after all, for the opening day of the 22nd PLC proved to be captivating, and I quickly overcame my fuzzy-headedness.

We began the day with many greetings – from representatives of the host institutions and local library associations. Feeling very welcomed, we then went through introductions of the delegates, and of the steering committee. Reportedly there are 56 attendees this year, and this is the 3rd time the Colloquy has met in Edmonton.

Our opening keynote session was delivered by anthropologist, film-maker and author, Niobe Thompson. He treated us to the first North American screening of his documentary film about the sea mammal diet of the Chukchi people in Siberia. Throughout the screening, he shared his thoughts on the role of documentary film-making in polar studies, noting that film can act as a bridge between academia and polar communities, and also suggesting how and why keepers of polar collections might use films in their work. This session was certainly the highlight of the day for me, and it was a great way to kick off the week.

Thompson joined us again after lunch for another film screening, this time of the documentary, Tar Sands: Canada for Sale, a thought-provoking look at the oil boom in Fort McMurray, Alberta covering a variety of players and perspectives. Afterwards, the audience and Thompson had some time to engage in questions and discussion generated by the film.

Next up on the agenda was a presentation on the University of Alberta's impressive William C. Wonders Map Collection by David Jones, the map librarian. Jones described the cartographic resources found in the collection, the online bibliographic access to the resources, and he showed us samples of the works within, from the very old to the new. Later after his session, we were able to view the collection in person, on our walking tour of the University of Alberta campus.

Before we broke into groups for our campus tour, the winner of the 2nd William Mills Book Prize was announced...or rather, winners. For this year, the quantity and quality of nominees for the prize was such that one winner was chosen and another author was recognized with an honourable mention. Beau Riffenburgh won for the Encyclopedia of the Antarctic, and Ann Fienup-Riordan was awarded an honourable mention for Yuungnaqpiallerput / The Way We Genuinely Live: Masterworks of Yup'ik Science and Survival.

For some, the PLC activities for the day then ended with the stroll through the campus in the sunshine...for others, the opening day polar libraries fellowship continued in true Canadian style – at the local pub, with malt beverages and a hockey game.

Posted by: Rae-Lynne Aramburo, Nunavut Arctic College

Obituary: Roy "Fritz" Koerner

2008-06-02T13:41:00.002-04:00

Fritz Koerner, Glaciologist and polar explorer who with Wally Herbert's team made the first surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean, 29/05/2008.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2050482/Fritz-Koerner.html

Posted by:
Elise Chodat,
Bibliographic Systems Librarian,
INAC

Greenland officials get to Iqaluit via Europe

2008-05-28T12:39:00.002-04:00

Greenland officials get to Iqaluit via Europe : Health delegation forced into three-day odyssey. Jane George. Nunatsiaq News. May 23, 2008.

http://www.nunatsiaq.com//news/nunavik/80523_1231.html

Posted by:

Elise Chodat, Bibliographic Systems Librarian
INAC Library

For Sale: Arctic Sovereignty?

2008-05-28T11:55:00.001-04:00

For Sale: Arctic Sovereignty? : How losing a Canadian satellite to the US would be like losing our eyes on the North. by Michael Byers. The Walrus. June 2008.

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2008.06-technology-for-sale-arctic-sovereignty-radarsat-mda-michael-byers/

Posted by:
Elise Chodat
INAC Library

Norway Opens New ‘Window into Space’

2008-05-28T10:55:00.002-04:00

Norway Opens New ‘Window into Space’
May 24, 2008 6:05 PM
by findingDulcinea Staff

http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/science/March-April-08/Norway-Opens-New--Window-into-Space-.html

Posted by:

Elise Chodat
INAC

Farther poles

2008-05-23T11:38:00.003-04:00

Earth vs. Mars: Polar Opposites
By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 23 May 2008 ET

The poles of Earth and Mars stand out from a distance.

The ends of the Earth and the ends of Mars are both extreme locations. While the poles of both planets are unique, they share some remarkable similarities.
With a NASA probe set to land on Mars' arctic region this weekend, we set out to compare the two worlds.

Full story...

Posted by: Elise Chodat, Bibliographic Systems Librarian, INAC

Reading list about Inuit in Canada

2008-05-23T11:27:00.002-04:00

Hello,

I thought some of you might be interested in a reading list the INAC Departmental Library put together on Inuit history and culture. It was updated this past January. The URL will be changing sometime this summer. When I have an updated URL, I will post it to the blog.

Inuit History and Culture : A Select Bibliography

Histoire et culture des Inuit : une bibliographie sélective

Best wishes,

Elise Chodat
Bibliographic Systems Librarian
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada

Program Updated

2008-04-29T16:48:00.001-04:00

The PLC program is being updated frequently.
You can view it by going to the conference website, click on "View Conference Details" and the click on "Program".

New Lower Rates for Jasper tour - deadline April 28

2008-04-22T16:23:00.004-04:00

Expressions of interest
If you are interested in the Jasper/Icefields Pre-Colloquy Tour or the Drumheller Tour, please respond by no later than April 28th

May 31-June 1 Depart Edmonton at 7:30 am/ Arrive Jasper at 12:00 pm. Next Day - Depart Jasper at 8:00 am/ Arrive back in Edmonton about 6-6:30 pm
Trip includes: Deluxe motor coach tour, overnight in Jasper township, Sightseeing-Malinge Canyon, Malinge Lake, Athabasca Falls, Admission, one night accommodation in Jasper, professional tour, Columbia Icefields Snocoach ride, and 1 breakfast.
New Rates: Double occupancy $265.00 + 5% GST Single occupancy $325.00 + 5% GST

Drumheller Museum June 7http://www.traveldrumheller.com/index.htmlDepart Edmonton at 7:30 AMReturn Edmonton about 8:00 PMDeluxe motor coach tour, sightseeing-Drumheller Valley, admission to Royal Tyrrell Museum, Lunch in DrumhellerPrice $100.00 CDN,
Contact:Cindy Mason cindy.mason@ualberta.caPh: 1 780 492-1153FAX: 1 780 492-1153

Larry Loyie and Constance Brissenden to speak

2008-03-14T16:14:00.005-04:00

Authors Larry Loyie and Constance Brissenden will speak at the Polar Libraries Colloquy. Larry and Constance have co-published several childrens works including The Gathering Tree and When the Spirits Dance. Learn more at their web-site http://www.firstnationswriter.com/.

Proposals and Early-bird deadline - Last Call

2008-03-14T16:12:00.004-04:00

This is the last call for presentation proposals and early-bird registrations
for PLC 2008. Deadline has been extended to March 18.

New Group Code for Campus Tower room bookings

2008-02-21T16:34:00.001-05:00

Campus Tower has given us a new Group Code for making on-line reservations

To book at Campus Tower online.
Go to www.campustower.ca Click on 'Reservations' and then 'Make reservation'
There will be a prompt for a 'Group code' -- and they have now assigned the Group code
ACT-GFC239 If there are problems, email can be sent from the website or FAX 780-433-4410

silent and outcry auctions

2008-02-09T21:22:00.000-05:00

Hello. This is "Freezer" the polar beanie bear, reminding you to bring treasures for the silent and outcry auctions.

PLC 2008 Conference site

2008-02-05T11:25:00.000-05:00

Here's a look at the Timms Centre for the Arts, where PLC2008 will be held.
You can take a virtual tour.
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/drama/timmstour/house.htm

From the left side of Timms, there is a pedway link to HUB Mall http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/hubmall/ where there are lots of small shops and restaurants.

PLC Deadlines Extended

2008-02-05T11:15:00.000-05:00

Because we've extended the abstract deadline to March 15, we've also pushed the early bird registration deadline out to March 15. Thank you to those of you who have submitted and registered.

PLC Conference Blog now merged with PLC Blog

2008-02-05T11:03:00.000-05:00

Julia Finn reminded me that we had used the PLC Blog for the Rome conference, so I'm merging the Edmonton Conference Blog with this one. Many of you probably already have RSS feeds set up from this one.

The conference site blog will now point to this one.

2008 Polar Libraries ColloquyEdmonton, Alberta June 2-6, 2008

2008-02-01T10:12:00.000-05:00

The 22nd Polar Libraries Colloquy will be hosted jointly by the Canadian Circumpolar Institute and the University of Alberta Libraries in Edmonton, Alberta in 2008.

For more information, consult the 2008 Colloquy website.

2008 William Mills Prize Call for Nominations

2008-02-01T09:05:00.000-05:00

The deadline for submissions is March 21, 2008.

The William Mills Prize for Non-Fiction Polar Books was established in memory of William Mills, who was a core member of Polar Libraries Colloquy during its formative years and a consummate polar librarian as well as author.

The book prize honors the best Arctic or Antarctic nonfiction books published throughout the world. The prize consists of $100 US, certificates for the author and publisher, and the right to use the William Mills Prize logo when advertising the winning book.

Winning titles are announced on pollib-L, on the Colloquy web site, in the Polar Libraries Bulletin and other appropriate library publications. The prize was first awarded in 2006.

Qualifications for Nomination

The book must be nonfiction, about the Arctic or Antarctic.

The book may be any type of substantive work of nonfiction, or reference resource. Textbooks, anthologies, edited works, and other small-scale efforts will not be considered unless they are truly outstanding contributions to the polar literature.

The book must have been published for the first time between the dates of the last Colloquy and the Colloquy at which the award will be given. Re-releases, translations of older materials, and updated editions will not be eligible.

The official language of the Colloquy is English. For this reason books must be published in an English language version to be eligible.

Submissions are required to include the following information:

Book title

Author(s)/Corporate author(s)

Place of publication

Publisher

Date of Publication (must be between May 2006 - June 2008)

Name and contact information of person nominating the book

Additional information such as a book summary, statement of the book's impact, book reviews, etc. would be very welcome but are not mandatory. No fee is necessary to make a submission and no copies of the book are required in order to be considered.

Please send nominations by email or by post to:

Jude Baldwin
jude.baldwin@taos.fnsb.lib.ak.us
P.O. Box 203
Ester, AK 99725
USA

'Ultimate survivor's' plight takes center stage in warming debate

2007-01-09T09:40:00.000-05:00

The US proposed designation of the polar bear as a threatened species has provided climate campaigns with a potent symbol.
In a 154-page document, the Bush administration explained that polar bears' ice habitat – used as platforms for hunting, mating and resting – could vanish within half a century.

"Polar bears are one of nature's ultimate survivors," Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne told reporters. "They're able to live and thrive in one of the world's harshest environments, but there's concern that their habitat may literally be melting away."

The administration's decision moves the polar bear a step closer to an unprecedented level of protection under the 33-year-old endangered species law. If Interior finalizes the listing a year from now, it could have significant implications for new energy projects in the bears' Alaska habitat and across the country.

...

Story on CICERO: http://www.cicero.uio.no/webnews.asp?id=10761&lang=en

Posted by Elise Chodat,
Bibliographic Systems Librarian,
Departmental Library, INAC

Northern Research Forum, Yellowknife, 2004

2006-08-16T12:00:00.000-04:00

The position papers from the NRF 2004 are available in full-text on their web site at:

http://www.nrf.is/Open%20Meetings/Yellowknife_2004/PositionPapers.htm

Elise Chodat
Bibliographic Systems Librarian
INAC

Northern Research Portal

2006-08-03T12:47:00.000-04:00

The Northern Research Portal is now available from the University of Saskatchewan Archives and Library.

This unique site presents resources for the study of northern Canada and the circumpolar world. It includes material such as maps, photographs, and published and unpublished works, many of which are presented as interpretive exhibits. The material is grouped for different audiences--K-5 students, general readers, and advanced researchers. There are also resources for K-12 teachers.

Joanne Noel
Departmental Library
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada

SCAR Awards a Medal for Achievement to Dr. David Walton of the British Antarctic Survey

2006-06-29T13:02:00.000-04:00

From the SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) Newsletter
Issue 7, June 2006:

"SCAR Awards its First Medals for Achievement"

"On July 12, 2006, as part of the opening ceremony for the SCAR Open Science Conference, in Hobart, Tasmania, the President, Professor Jörn Thiede will award the following three SCAR medals: ... (iii) to Dr. David Walton (UK) the SCAR Medal for International Scientific Coordination. The full citations will be made available at the meeting. SCAR Secretariat team congratulates the Awardees and wishes them all the best in the future."

Ross Goodwin
Arctic Science and Technology Information System (ASTIS)
Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Scientists note stunning loss of ice, snow - from CBC North

2006-06-22T12:56:00.000-04:00

Last updated May 18 2006 04:23 PM CDT
CBC News
From elders watching the movement of sea ice in Nunavut to climatologists studying satellite weather maps, people are amazed and alarmed by how quickly spring is coming to the Arctic this year.

Record-warm temperatures have taken their toll on ice cover in Canada's Arctic waters and snow cover on land.

"I've never seen it so wide open this time of year," said Environment Canada's David Phillips, talking about the body of water between Baffin Island and mainland Quebec. "It's just blue, blue as the bluest sky."

...

For the full article, please go to the CBC web site at:

http://www.cbc.ca/north/story/nor-warming-icemelt.html

Submitted by Elise Chodat, Bibliographic Systems Librarian, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.

Memoirs of Australian Antarctic Scientist John Bunt

2006-06-22T09:46:00.000-04:00

John Bunt's Antarctic Memoirs have been published.

Bunt, an Australian scientist now retired, worked on sea ice algae physiology in Antarctica and other topics, and was an early diver under the ice in Antarctica.

About this book:

"A rare account, at first hand, of the brave new world of Antarctica in the early days of the 1950s, within the repetitions and routines of scientific work in a place of ultimate isolation, camaraderie and the magic of the first contact with the last unknown region of our planet." David Malouf

Ordering information is available on the publisher's site at SeaView Press.

Peter Brueggeman
Director, Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library, UCSD

William Mills Polar Book Prize & Award Ceremony

2006-06-19T15:22:00.000-04:00

Announcement of the William Mills Polar Book Prize and Invitation to Award Ceremony

H.M. Tory Professor of Anthropology Mark Nuttall's Encyclopedia of the Arctic has won the 2006 William Mills Polar Book Prize.

The prize is awarded biennially to the most important contribution to Arctic or Antarctic literature published in the past two years.

Please join us on Thursday June 22nd, 2006 at 3:30pm MDT in the Professor Emeritus room on the 3rd floor of the Cameron Library, University of Alberta (11320 - 89 Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) for the award presentation and light refreshments.

About the Williams Mills Prize

The William Mills Prize is adjudicated by an international committee of Polar Libraries Colloquy members. The Polar Libraries Colloquy is a biennial meeting of librarians and others concerned with the collection, preservation, and dissemination of information dealing with the Arctic and Antarctic regions. The next Polar Libraries Colloquy will be in Edmonton in 2008.

Liz Dennett
Chair of 2006 William Mills Prize Committee
University of Alberta Health Sciences Librarian

Elaine Maloney
Polar Libraries Colloquy Member
Canadian Circumpolar Institute

International Chair of Inuit Circumpolar Conference named Canadian hero by Time magazine

2006-06-15T09:39:00.000-04:00

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, International Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, has been named a Canadian hero by Time magazine.

In its third annual list of Canada's Heroes, Time highlights people who have made a difference to their communities and to their country. The article can be found in the June 19, 2006 issue of Time (Canadian edition).

Excerpt from canada.com:

Sheila Watt-Cloutier believes climate change, and the threats it poses, is as much a story of people than a story of science. Through involvement in numerous organizations, including the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and the United Nations Environment Program she has taken the story of the threats to a way of life in the north around the world. Her passion resonates, reflecting her upbringing, her devotion and her courage.

Joanne Noel
Departmental Library
Indian & Northern Affairs Canada

21st Polar Libraries Colloquy - Friday, May 12th, 2006

2006-05-12T09:44:00.000-04:00

The 8th and final session of the 21st Polar Library Colloquy was an interesting one. Details will follow later as I lost all the blog content while blogging earlier today. Today’s talks, movies and the summing up made a memorable end to the official program. The silent auction was a great success and now everyone is looking forward to the out cry auction at the banquet. There are some really nice items left to crave for!

Silvia and her co-workers have succeeded. There has been no technical problems and everyone has enjoyed the open and relaxed atmosphere at the venue. Also the tasty food served at lunch-time and at breaks!

Details and more content added later (Monday the 15th of May):

Ron Inouye (Fairbanks, Alaska) chaired the 8th and final session with great enthusiasm.

Liisa Kurppa of the Arctic Centre, Rovaniemi, Finland, presented a paper on the Barents Information Portal and its improvement.

http://www.barentsinfo.org/ - The Barents Information Portal was launched in 2004 with Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and Russian partners. It offers over 3500 links covering articles, news, facts, maps, photo galleries, tourist portals etc. It presents and links information in a vast area where traveling is pretty time consuming and expensive. Also it presents web pages in English, so that language barriers are overcome.

Susan Grigg of Elmer E. Rasmuson Library was not present at the PLC, so her paper on Alaska’s Digital Archives was presented by Dennis Stephens.

http://vilda.alaska.edu/ – This archive is launched by UA Fairbanks, UA Anchorage and Alaska State Library with their affiliated museums. The consortia idea proved good for funding! The archive has focused on statehood and native history and culture. The searchable archive includes manuscripts, maps, photographs, films, oral history recordings, artifacts. Also, the archive includes LearnAlaska, an associated tool for pre-college students.

Allaina Howard of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), University of Colorado, Boulder, USA, gave her talk on the NOAA’s Climate Database Modernization Program.

http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g00472_glacier_photos/index.html - Online Glacier Photograph Database holds images from bound books, photographs, microfilm and microfische, negatives, slides etc. The first project began in 2001, and by 2002 201 images were digitized -by 2005 it contained 3000 images, the oldest image dating from 1883. In March 2006 the first special collection with repeat photography was launched.

http://arcss.colorado.edu/data/g01111.html - The Dehn Collection of Arctic Sea Ice Charts will contain about 7000 paper charts from Alaska, Western Canadian Arctic and Bering Sea dating from 1953 to 1986. By 2005 4000 images were digitized.

DAHLI is the newest project, focusing on IPY publications (see session 3).

Ann-Christine Haupt, Luleå University Library, offered us an extra film session during the coffee break. Her film, “My mother and I”, has won the first price in a film festival in Kautokeino, Norway. It truly was a gem of a film from Pajala in northern Sweden!

The final speaker, Mauro Alberti, of the Museo nazionale dell’Antartide, Siena, Italy, presented the museum.

http://www.mna.it/ - The Italian Antarctic Museum has a large collection of samples collected by Italian scientific expeditions etc. to the Antarctica. Genova holds the biological samples, Siena the rock collections and Trieste the marine sediment samples. The library of the museum holds more than 5000 records, the oldest dating from around 1840.

Before lunch we could enjoy films from Antarctica, a new one presenting the work of the Australian Antarctic Division, an older one presenting the conservation of Mawson’s hut and the final one presenting a film made under the “Operation Tabarin” in 1944-45. After lunch Knud Ramussen was presented in a Danish documentary.

The film sessions were truly popular, and hopefully it’s many more to come in the next colloquies.

Towards the end of the colloquy we had entertaining closing remarks by 2 new participants, represented by Shelly Sommer (INSTAAR) and James Huesmann (Elmer E. Rasmuson Library). An “old” participant, David A. Walton (just recently retired from the British Antarctic Survey), could also serve us fresh comments on the colloquy.

Also by the end of the colloquy: Silvia Sartia presented Sandy Campbell, who will host the 22nd venue of the PLC, Edmonton 2008, and Silvia could happily pass on the toy elephant with the fake ring to Sandy. Julia Triplehorn made sure the Steering Committee got nice gifts.

Friday evening a visit to the American Academy in Rome and the banquet at Villa Aurelia waited. After enjoying a nice dinner, many stories and David Walton in charge of the out cry auction, the PLC participants could send BIG thanks to Silvia Sartia and her colleagues for hosting a great colloquy and to Vibeke Sloth Jakobsen for chairing us so nicely the past two years.

When posting this on Monday evening, the temperature is 2 degrees Celsius below zero in Longyearbyen, and I truly like it far better than the 20-25 degrees in Rome! Nevertheless it was a great colloquy in Rome - the ancient town in the south! Longyearbyen is only 100 year old - young and wild in comparison!

The very best polar greetings from the higher latitudes (78 degrees N)!
Berit

21st Polar Libraries Colloquy - Thursday, May 11th, 2006

2006-05-12T03:31:00.000-04:00

Session 7 began with Shelly Sommer describing the strong and growing relationship between the libraries at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research and the National Snow and Ice Data Center at University of Colorado.

Judie Triplehorn told us about some of the history of publication in the Barrow area and David Ongley described the developments in the building of BASC, the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium. Barrow looks like a place we would all like to visit in the future.

Sandy Campbell
Canadian Circumpolar Collection
University of Alberta
Edmonton

21st Polar Libraries Colloquy - Thursday, May 11th (continued)

2006-05-12T03:10:00.000-04:00

The final presentation of Session 7 was given by Daria Carle who told us about the building of Consortium Library at University of Alaska Anchorage and also about other groups who collaborate in their network including the Health Sciences Information Service, the Alaska Moving Image Preservation Association and The Alaska Digital Archives.

Sandy Campbell
Canadian Circumpolar Collection
University of Alberta
Edmonton
Canada

21st Polar Libraries Colloquy -Thursday, May 11th, 2006

2006-05-11T05:32:00.000-04:00

This morning's sessions began with Michela Cecconi and Andrea Marchitelli of the Consortium for the Italian Antarctic Programme giving a thorough presentation on the NILDE document delivery system, which is used by 508 Italian libraries. This paper engendered some discussion about copyright issues around document delivery in Europe.

Irina Merkina, this year's Wenger award winner, from the Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography in Murmansk gave an overview of the history of her organization and described some of the other libraries in Murmansk

Satu Hallikainen rounded out Session 6 with an inspiring paper on the importance of using open-source software and open standards.

Sandy Campbell
Canadian Circumpolar Collection
University of Alberta
Edmonton

21st Polar Libraries Colloquy - Hubert Wenger Auction

2006-05-11T05:21:00.000-04:00

The Hubert Wenger Auction tables are full of the most interesting items and bidding is becoming more intense. There are maps, books, videos, maple syrup, t-shirts, posters, mittens and other interesting souvenirs. Among the items reserved for the outcry auction at the banquet are a quilt, polar bear face slippers, a wind-up boat with a penguin paddling and several bottles of "lubricant". We are expecting excellent returns for the Wenger fund.

Sandy Campbell
Canadian Circumpolar Collection
University of Alberta

21st Polar Libraries Colloquy - Wednesday, May 10th, 2006

2006-05-10T12:18:00.000-04:00

Wow, what a full day we have had on this day 3 of Colloquy in Rome. The morning session, chaired by Marcel Brannemann, had three great papers, all generally concerning user services. Pierre Beaudreau of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada told us about his institution's use of a "Call Center" and how the implementation of the Call Center in 2003 has functioned in handling the large number of inquiries that come into Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. Shelly Sommer of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research gave us a great overview of her user education program in the INSTAAR Library, and her outreach efforts to engage more users to the collection. Her focus has been on identifying particular research tools and teaching users how to navigate them in a workshop format. Sandy Campbell of the Science and Technology Library of the University of Alberta, gave a fascinating presentation that showed how her institution has been using Podcasts and Screencasts to deliver information to patrons in a new way.

After the break, Ron Inouye presented the first William Mills Book Prize. After reading some short bio information about William, the winner was announced. Congratulations to Mark Nutall, editor of the Encyclopedia of the Arctic. Although Mark could not be with us at Colloquy, he sent a written note that Ron shared.

Pierre Beaudreau then presented the new International Polar Libraries Colloquy website. Congratulations on a job well done to all who were involved with this project.

The final event of the morning was the Colloquy Business Meeting, at which much business was discussed. Minutes of the meeting will be made available to members at some point in the near future. 42 members were present for the meeting. I will highlight only one item on the business meeting agenda, and that is to thank Silvia and her colleagues for arranging a fine meeting. We know that it is a tremendous amount of work, so we all Thank You!

After lunch, Sharon Tarhirkheli chaired the afternoon sessions. The first part of the afternoon focused on digital resources in libraries. Steve Schafer of Athabasca University gave an interesting presentation on the digital initiatives of his institution, paying particular attention to the goals of creating digital collections, sharing digital resources and cooperation in library services, highlighting aspects of the Digital Reading Room that address these goals. Anna Chiodetti of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology gave a great overview of Earth-Prints, an open archives created with DSpace software. She showed how users can submit publications to the digital repository, as well as identified the mission and objectives of the repository. Rai Goerler of The Ohio State University presented a paper based on another DSpace application, OSU's Knowledge Bank. He pointed out both the benefits as well as the challenges of digital repositories and noted that a critical link in the success of a digital repository in an academic setting are the librarians who are working with the faculty.

After a short break, Elena Benedetti and Alessandro Damiani, of the SIRIA project, presented an interesting paper about the work involved in collecting and making available the metadata needed in order to provide access to the products of the research of the Programma Nazionale Ricerche in Antartide (PNRA). One of the key points of their presentation was the need for standardized and well-defined metadata. Elaine Maloney of the CCI Press, Canadian Circumpolar Institute, wrapped up the day's sessions with a presentation about the Solstice Series. Her presentation began with an overview of the trials and tribulations of academic presses, and the innovative and collaborative solutions that have allowed the CCI press to publish 4 volumes in the Solstice Series to date.

Laura Kissel
Byrd Polar Research Center Achival Program
The Ohio State University

21st Polar Libraries Colloquy - Tuesday, May 9th, 2006

2006-05-09T08:28:00.000-04:00

David Walton was great as Chair of this very informative second session, which opened with a presentation by Nancy Liston of the Cold Regions Engineering Laboratory. The presentation focused on the growing challenges in operations and maintenance of the Cold Regions Laboratory and library, which include major institutional reorganization, major funding shifts in the military (as a result of changing priorities especially over the last 2 years), and staff flow-out with retirement resulting in great losses in human and financial resources to continue the work to the level the laboratory and library have enjoyed in the past. Concerns for bibliographic comprehensiveness, and the ability to respond to information needs enquiries are overshadowed by concerns for the long-term sustainability of the collections and services. The current means of alleviating the concern for identification of materials is through collaboration and networking, and seems to be working. The question remains, however, about the future viability of this and other resource centres, as more positions are lost through retirement and capacity in terms of information specialists will be left wanting.

The second presentation by Sharon Tahirkheli of the American Geological Institute echoed the concern for comprehensiveness in bibliographic services, and outlines several collaborative arrangements that have proven most effective for the Cold Regions Bibliography Project, outlining the benefits to all.

Paolo Lini of the Institute for Atmospheric Pollution, EKOLab provided an overview of the very interesting terminology database on snow and ice project. The presentation focused on the advantages of developing a common terminology in for a specific area in a structured reference multilingual and technical vocabulary for accuracy in research reporting and in the subsequent indexing of that material for bibliography and databases. Although theoretically the database will include indigenous languages in the subset areas, on a practical level this is not currently possible because the structure of the thesaurus (using eastern knowledge systems) does not lend itself to organizing the terms for other knowledge systems.

Session 3, chaired by Berit Jakobsen, featured three presentations (one as a panel discussion) for the collection, indexing, and preservation of data and metadata for International Polar Year (IPY)-related projects. A first presentation by Ross Goodwin of the Arctic Science and Technology Information System (ASTIS), Arctic Institute of North America and Heather Lane of the Scott Polar Research Institute focused on plans for information management for the upcoming IPY. The second presentation by Ruth Duerr of the National Snow and Ice Data Center described a project to recover and catalogue materials from past IPYs. The panel discussion outlined some of the challenges ahead in identifying and recovering the material, and outlined current thinking on how the project might tag and index the expected 20,000+ publications resulting from IPY, and collect these into subsets of existing databases that would be accessible from a single portal.

This afternoon we are headed for a visit to the National Library, and so there will be no further reporting until tomorrow.

Elaine Maloney
Canadian Circumpolar Institute
University of Alberta

21st Polar Libraries Colloquy - Monday, May 8th, 2006

2006-05-08T10:22:00.000-04:00

Today was the beginning of the 21st Polar Libraries Colloquy, hosted at the National Research Council in Rome. About 60 people attended and represented a great diversity of nations--Italy, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, Finland--to name a few.

The Conference began with welcoming remarks that concerned Italian research efforts in Antarctica, which is also celebrating its 21st year of activities.

Because the conference proceedings will be published, I will offer only some highlights.

Deidre Stamm provided an informative and entertaining overview of early efforts at networking information that took the forms of books, newspapers published during the expeditions, and even pre-printed forms to be left in caches to indicate events and destinations.

A second paper by Mary Katherine Jones also addressed early networking but concerned itself with efforts as early as cartography in 1290. Particularly noteworthy was the statement that the custom of the leader of the expedition publishing first was not common until after Martin Frobisher.

Three papers ended the day. Laura Kissel presented a case study of declassification of materials in the papers of Admiral Richard E. Byrd at The Ohio State University. She pointed to the difficulties of finding the right federal office (Information Security Oversight Office) and the challenges of receiving a timely response.

Irene Piippola of Finland presented a colorful presentation concerning early maps of Lapland and used the website "Travellers in Lapland. " Finally, Vibeke Sloth Jakobsen and Kirsten Lkuver of the Danish Polar Center discussed the centennial of the Danish Expedition to Greenland, 1906 to 1908. Although lives were lost on the expedition, it was successful in mapping the unknown coast of Northern Greenland. An exhibit will soon appear on the website of the Danish Polar Center.

The day ended with an open discussion of the University of the Arctic. All in all, this was a very informative day that also allowed people to meet and talk with each other--to network at a polar conference with the theme "Building Polar Networks."

Raimund E. Goerler
Ohio State University

"Building Boom" in Antarctica

2006-05-04T17:56:00.000-04:00

An interesting article recently appeared in the New Zealand Herald on April 19, 2006, regarding the building of new research stations in Antarctica.

"A research station set to be built by the Baltic state of Estonia in New Zealand's Ross Dependency is part of a construction boom expected on the frozen continent of Antarctica next summer.

The development rush has been linked to the declaration of next year as international polar year, but there are concerns it will create environmental problems, Melbourne's The Age newspaper reported yesterday."

The full article is available at:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10377992

Julia Finn
Departmental Library
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Ottawa

Ohio State University and the Colloquy

2006-05-02T12:12:00.000-04:00

I have been to every Polar Libraries Colloquy since 1992, when it was held in Columbus, Ohio. Lynn Lay, who is the librarian of the University's Byrd Polar Research, has been involved even before then.

Lynn will not be able to attend this year. I and Laura Kissell are looking forward to the Colloquy. The papers are always informative about new programs and new ways of developing and sharing information about science in polar environments. We look forward also to seeing colleagues and finding new ways to cooperate.

Currently, I am reading Thomas Friedman's book, A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, which has the theme that the earth has become "flat" because information technology has brought us closer together. Certainly, the polar libraries colloquy has evidenced this theme for many years.

See you soon.
Rai

How to leave a comment on the PLC Blog

2006-04-19T14:55:00.000-04:00

If you would like to comment on any of the information posted to the PLC Blog, please follow these instructions:

Leaving comments on the PLC Blog

PLC Blog Comment Guidelines

The PLC Blog provides a collaborative environment for its readers. Each post will include a comment feature to allow readers to comment on what they read.

You do not have to be a member of the Colloquy to add a comment, but all comments will be moderated and must first be approved by the PLC Blog Administrator before they are posted to this blog.

Acceptable comments include:

Feedback or commentary on the content of a specific post
Additional information and relevant links related to the content of the post

Comments that justify deletion include:

Commentary that is in no way related to the specific post
Commentary containing unacceptable, rude, or abusive language
Commentary that may constitute libel and slander
Spam

Blogs: an introduction

2006-04-19T14:43:00.000-04:00

If you're new to the world of blogs and blogging, here's some information to help you get started:

Blog (definition) - from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of blogging terms - from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

About the Polar Libraries Colloquy Blog

2006-04-11T13:26:00.000-04:00

The Polar Libraries Colloquy Blog provides a discussion forum for issues of interest to Colloquy members, as well as others concerned with the collection, preservation, and dissemination of polar information.

Items of interest could include, but are not limited to, information about and news from member libraries, recent polar research, relevant news stories, and useful Internet resources.

Items will be posted regularly and commentary is encouraged.

PLC Blog Contributors

Members of the PLC Steering Committee are actively involved in posting information to the PLC Blog. Additionally, other members of the Colloquy may be invited to contribute.

Others wishing to share relevant information may contact the PLC Blog Administrator to request that their information be posted to the blog.

PLC Blog Comment Guidelines

In addition to posting information, the PLC Blog also provides a collaborative environment for its readers. Each post will include a comment feature to allow readers to comment on what they read.

You do not have to be a member of the Colloquy to add a comment, but all comments will be moderated and must first be approved by the PLC Blog Administrator before they are posted to this blog.

Acceptable comments include:

Feedback or commentary on the content of a specific post
Additional information and relevant links related to the content of the post

Comments that justify deletion include:

Commentary that is in no way related to the specific post
Commentary containing unacceptable, rude, or abusive language
Commentary that may constitute libel and slander
Spam

Coming soon...the Polar Libraries Colloquy Blog!

2006-03-29T19:46:00.000-05:00

Check back soon for more information on the new Polar Libraries Colloquy blog...a discussion forum for librarians and others concerned with the collection, preservation, and dissemination of polar information.