Slide 1
Looking for comprehensive, authoritative geology and geophysics information? In the following overview, we will focus on GeoRef (File 89), the free file of the month for May. You will see what this database contains and how it is vital for your research.
Slide 2
The GeoRef database (File 89), established by the American Geological Institute in 1966, provides access to the geoscience literature of the world. GeoRef is the most comprehensive bibliographic database in the geosciences and continues to grow by more than 100,000 references a year. It is updated biweekly with approximately 3,000 records per update.
Slide 3
A bit of history provides background on the producer of GeoRef. The American Geological Institute (AGI) is a nonprofit federation of 46 geoscientific and professional associations that represents more than 120,000 geologists, geophysicists, and other earth scientists. Founded in 1948, AGI provides information services to geoscientists, serves as a voice of shared interests in the profession, plays a major role in strengthening geoscience education, and strives to increase public awareness of the vital role the geosciences play in society's use of resources, resilience to natural hazards, and the health of the environment.
Slide 4
The GeoRef database covers the geology of North America from 1669 to the present and the geology of the rest of the world from 1933 to the present. The database includes references to all publications of the U.S. Geological Survey and covers worldwide technical literature on geology and geophysics corresponding to the print publications: Bibliography and Index of North American Geology, Bibliography of Theses in Geology, the Geophysical Abstracts, Bibliography and Index of Geology Exclusive of North America. GeoRef organizes and indexes papers from more than 13,000 serials and other publications representative of the interests of the 46 professional geological and earth science societies that are members of the AGI. About 40% of the indexed publications originate in the United States and the remainder from outside the U.S. Publications of international organizations represent about 7% of the file.
Slide 5
The database contains more than three million references to geoscience journal articles, books, maps, government documents, conference, symposia and meeting papers, reports and dissertations and theses from U.S. and Canadian universities.
Slide 6
GeoRef uses specialized indexing including a thesaurus and subject categories. The 11th edition of the GeoRef Thesaurus contains more than 30,800 controlled vocabulary terms and the complete GeoRef indexing structure. The Thesaurus is an indispensable tool for efficient searching of the GeoRef database. All references included in the GeoRef database are assigned one or occasionally several specific subject categories, sub-categories and major topics. In addition, geographic coordinates let you search for records relating to an area within a quadrangle, bounded by latitude and longitude.
Slide 7
Use File 89 to search for all information relating to geology, including environmental geology, energy sources, and paleontology. Major areas of coverage are: Economic Geology, Engineering Geology, Extraterrestial Geology, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Hydrology, Marine Geology, Mathematical Geology, Mineralogy, Structural Geology and more.
Slide 8
Some titles will give you a flavor of the kind of scientific and technical literature contained in the database. Sources range from Chemical Geology, Journal of Hydrology, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Engineering Geology to Geophysics and Journal of Petrology, to cite a few examples. Notice articles discuss geological topics in many different countries.
Slide 9
Let's take a look at a record in the database. Each record includes the title, author, source, date and country of publication. Notice too that the corporate source in this example a university in Germany and the name and location of the publisher is also available.
Slide 10
A detailed abstract is contained in many of the records. Indexing includes coordinates of latitude and longitude and descriptors and section headings can help you find additional articles on similar topics.
Slide 11
As you can see, GeoRef (File 89) provides comprehensive information about geology and geophysics worldwide.
Slide 12
This completes our overview of GeoRef. Thank you for your interest in this premier geological database and put it on your list to try for free in May.