Knowledge Bank

There are several print bibliographies that cover the geoscience literature before 1900. The Bibliography of North American Geology (1785-1948) was incorporated into GeoRef as a special project. However, other non-North American bibliographies, for example, Repertorium Commentationum a Societatibus Litterariis Editarum, 1665-1800; The Royal Society (Great Britain), Catalogue of Scientific Papers 1800-1900; Agassiz, Louis, Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae, 1848; Catalogus Bibliothecae Historico-Naturalis Josephi Banks; Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, Geologie und Palaeontologie, 1830-1900; Bibliographia Geologica: 1896-1906; and Annuaire Géologique Universel: Revue de Géologie & Paléontology, 1885-1896 were not entered into GeoRef. Should they be included? Is coverage of major geological topics and/or journals missing from GeoRef? How accessible is the literature from this time period? As libraries move older material to remote storage, do we have the tools to find and recall this material, particularly the journal literature? The mathematicians are creating Electronic Research Archive for Mathematics, ERAM, a digital archive of the most important mathematical publications of the period 1868-1942 and a database based on the Jahrbuch über die Fortschritte der Mathematik. Is a similar project feasible for the geosciences?