GeoScience Information Society: 2003 National Meeting

摘要

The 2003 National Meeting of the GeoScience Information Society (GSIS) took place in Seattle, Washington, November 2-6, 2003. GSIS meets each year in conjunction with the Geological Society of America's (GSA) Annual Meeting. A typical program includes a Topical Session, presentation of technical papers, poster sessions, business meeting, luncheon, workshops, and a field trip. Additional annual meeting activities include an exhibit booth, presentation of awards, and a members' reception. Most of the membership attending are geology, earth and planetary science librarians from the academic sector. The biggest piece of breaking news at this meeting was the announcement of the upcoming launch of GeoScience World (GSW) (www.geoscienceworld. org), which is designed to be an aggregator resource that is a comprehensive Internet Web site for research and communications in the geological and earth sciences. This scholarly publication Web site will be built on a core database of peer-reviewed journals that are indexed, linked, and coordinated with the GeoRef abstracting and indexing article database. The founding societies and organizations include: the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), American Geological Institute (AGI), GSA, the Geological Society of London (GSL), Mineralogical Society of America (MSA), Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM), and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). The plan is for GSW to be the online site for aggregated full text journals of the founding organizations and of other not-for-profit and independent earth science publishers and to enhance journal access for individual users. It is hoped that with time, maps, books and geoscience data will be made available electronically. The goal of GSW is to defend against the increasing cost of commercial publishers and to meet the access demands of users. Benefits include an integrated package of the top geoscience journals, a searchable database and digitization of back issues. A free trial period for potential library subscribers is anticipated to be offered prior to the launch of paid online subscription service later in 2004. Charter online subscription rates will be announced in the summer of 2004.