Reports

Charge: Develop an Environmental Studies Portal that provides links to freely accessible Internet sites, jointly licensed proprietary databases or locally produced information processes. The group will report collective strengths and provide a list of available databases. Determine resources needed to complete this project. Recommend whether collaborative purchasing should support this endeavor. Explore potential for alternative or additional Consortium efforts in environmental studies. Group submits report with recommendations to Management council by June 2002.

1. Methodology

   Briefly examined were the components of a portal to provide a basic frame of reference for the management of environmental resources in such a configuration. In depth examination was given to the various modes in which the BLC Libraries were presenting environmental resources. The findings revealed that a variety of modes were utilized from the coupling of environmental resources with bibliographic instruction, in the form of a subject resource or pathfinders to the utilization of the public catalog and/or a general internet search engine (such as Google) as the primary mechanism to retrieve environmental information. In this latter instance the library did not support any environmental web pages as such. The title content reflected each institutions particular set of interests, and ranged from being very broad to very specific and focused primarily on proprietary databases and e-journals.

   Discussion focused on how to share proprietary databases, authentication of the user for the resource, the value, time and effort that would be needed to develop an environmental "free from the web" subject web resource, and how this could or would be more effective than utilizing one of the general web search engines or subject directories. It was agreed that the most effective content portal would include and/or link to various formats, such as, databases, e-journals, the gray literature, government and technical reports, and various datasets and GIS maps, recommended web sites and multi media resources. It was noted that developments in cross database searching and the inclusion of vetted "free web sites" in various proprietary databases placed the development of this set of resources on a questionable basis in view of the time and effort that would be need to develop such a resource.

2. Recommendations

   The Task Force recommends: that the development of an environmental web portal be deferred until various authentication issues to proprietary resources can be resolved, as such a portal would be most effective if all BLC users could have full access to various institutional databases and e-journals from the portal itself.

   In view of the all access problem that serious consideration be given to the purchase or procurement of environmental resources for the entire consortium. A good title to initiate such an effort would be Environmental Universe.

The Environmental Studies Task Force met in early April at Gerstenzang Science Library, Brandeis University to investigate the possibility of developing an environmental portal for the Boston Library Consortium. All five members were present for this meeting, but one member (Jonathan Nabe, Brandeis) has just moved to another institution. Electronic access to the listserv has been a problem at Brown University, where Lori is notified of locally rejected messages five or six days after the original message has been sent. (For a short time in February, listserv access was also a problem at Wellesley.) As a result, task force members have been using a distribution list instead of the consortial listserv to communicate with each other.

Ideally an environmental portal should access one or more environmentally focused databases and full-text resources (preferably electronic journals). In addition, it should contain links to gray literature of non-governmental organizations with environmental interests, technical reports and government documents at local, regional, national, and international levels. GIS and recommended websites would comprise two additional parts of the portal. However, it was agreed that links to environmental portions of the common search engines (e.g., from Google, Yahoo, etc.)--if done without adding context or annotation-would contribute little to the overall effort.

Common or shared database access among consortial institutions constitutes another important facet of an environmental portal. Investigation of consortial members' resources revealed that First Search and InfoTrac were the most commonly held databases. Since neither search interface now offers a well-focused environmental database for all consortial members, this task force recommends the following: that the Boston Library Consortium arrange for a trial of Environmental Universe and investigate the possiblity of purchasing access to this resource for the entire consortium. The appeal of Environmental Universe is that it intends to cover the U.S. federal literature and technical specifications like the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS).

There were also no widely held environmentally-focused fulltext databases that were shared among all members of the Boston Library Consortium. Discussion ensued about how much common access was needed to provide an effective portal. Would it be sufficient if only a few institutions' students or faculty could access electronic full-text, which all our patrons urge us to provide them? If the intended audience of an environmental portal is endusers who are affliliated with institutions in the Boston Library Consortium, then [the task force thought that] all of them should be able to reach the desired resources. Otherwise, it would turn into an exercise in frustration for endusers.

Library staffs within our consortium could benefit from linking to environmental or ecological rsearch guides (similar to pathfinders). Guides would be beneficial for staff answering reference questions, dealing with a new area of local collection development, or cataloging new types of resources. Presently, Brandeis, Tufts, Wellesley, and Williams have webpages that serve some of this need. Two of our members, Miriam Allman and Irene Laursen, are going to look into this further and will report back.

Environmental Studies Task Force members reviewed the report of the Portals Task Force, where questions were raised about the infrastructure needed to manage or maintain the portal. The environmental task force adds it own concern about a lack of robustness in shared resources, and recommends that the Boston Library Consortium defer consortial development of an environmental portal at this time.

Environmental Task Force members:
Miriam Allman, Tufts University
Joel Fowler, University of Massachusetts at Boston
Lori Jargo, Brown University
Irene Laursen, Wellesley College
Jonathan Nabe, Brandeis University

On the afternoon of January 31, 2002, the members of the Environmental Studies Task Force convened at Boston College for their preliminary meeting. The members decided to assess the program and collection strengths of consortial institutions as a first step toward identification of a narrow area in which the group might explore possible creation of a limited prototype of an environmental portal. This phase is still underway. The group also designated a liaison to the portals task force, and obtained a couple of background articles on characteristics of portals and an example of an environmental portal developed by California's digital library project.

Initial difficulty with receipt of postings from the task force's listserv caused the group to use distribution list rather than listserv for communication. Difficulty has been resolved and the group is now posting to the listserv.