Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information Two Volumes (1959) / Chapter Skim
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Requirements of Forest Scientists for Literature and Reference Services
Requirements of Forest Scientists for Literature and Reference Services
Pages 267-276
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From page 267... ...
They are not botanists, but scientists in their own right, and may be termed "forest scientists." Those concerned primarily with the biology of forest trees may be termed "forester-botanists." The literature offorest science is both voluminous and diverse. The selection of most scientists from men trained as professional foresters at either the Bachelors' or Masters' level has given rise to a scientific body long on competence in the field, but short in competence as library workers.
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From page 268... ...
One even cited the English summary of two Japanese articles the only citations in the issue referring to other than American, Canadian, or western European work. Even so, the present writer, who has been editor of Forest Science since its inception, can state that for most of the articles submitted to this journal, one or more highly pertinent references uncited by the authors can be turned up merely by five minutes perusal of standard abstract and bibliographic works.
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From page 269... ...
Articles published in university and museum serials, in local academy of science journals, and in similar series of limited circulation are as apt as not to be completely ignored, especially if written by relatively unknown scientists. An indication of what can be accomplishes!
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From page 270... ...
While it must be acknowledged that the best research eventually is published in bulletin orjournal form, the fact remains that a substantial portion offorestry literature is more or less buried in many hundred serials, reproduced by duplication processes other than conventional printing, published at irregular intervals, and circulated to small and often unedited mailing lists. Finally, a substantial quantity of fundamental research is available only in unpublished theses.
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From page 271... ...
It may be amusing to note that the antiquity of our supposedly revolutionary postwar research is indicated by a news item uncovered in a Berlin newspaper of 1887 which relates the experiences of a practicing German forester who attempted to map his forest by taking photographs from a hot-air balloon, and anticipated many of the problems that confronted us nearly sixty years later. FOREST INVENTORY On a subsequent research project at the Harvard Forest, we were confronted with a problem of the statistical correlations between the volume and growth of forest trees on one hand, and the conventional measurements of tree diameter, taper, height, and ring width on the other.
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From page 272... ...
~ Id. A project ofthis kind involves at least passing acquaintance with much ofthe entire literature of forest ecology, as well as with that of certain related aspects of tree physiology, genetics, plant geography, geobotany, soils, and meteorology.
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From page 273... ...
Of these, the output of the Oxford group is by all odds the most important to the English-speaking scientist. Here are published a quarterly Forestry Abstracts journal, giving more or less detailed abstracts of several thousand scientific papers each year; and a monthly title card service, providing 3-by-5 .
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From page 274... ...
Most American forestry libraries do not catalog separately or cross-reference adequately most of the journal articles and minor publications which form the bulk of the world forestry literature. Their card catalogs are thus of relatively little value to the scientist wishing to go beyond the obvious sources.
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From page 275... ...
Two copies of Forestry Abstracts are periodically disassembled, the abstracts cut out, and filed in accordance with the classification code printed on them. The major items are pasted on index cards, while the minor contributions are filed by separate decimal classes and geographical locality in envelopes of the same size in the same catalog.
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From page 276... ...
By following the procedures outlined above, it should be possible to construct and maintain a central literature file for world forestry literature at a very moderate cost. This file would take the form of a single catalog containing abstracts, citations, and photographic reductions of brief articles.
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