California water resources and Internet Archive
I have a lot of bulletins from the California Dept. of Water Resources (DWR) in my library. And like any forward thinking librarian, I want to provide my users with links in the catalog to electronic versions of the reports whenever possible. But why scan something when somebody else has done it first?
I knew that UC Davis’ library was adding e-copies of DWR reports to the Internet Archive, so I checked to see if they had done the ones I had. When I got to the California Water Resources collection there, I discovered a nice surprise: they have an RSS feed. So now I don’t have to keep checking back all the time; I can just follow the RSS feed. (It looks as if they do more scanning in the summer, naturally.)
OK, you’re thinking, that’s great if I’m interested in California water. Get this: the Internet Archive has almost three million texts. There’s a good chance there’s a collection that will interest you and that you’ll want to follow what they post.
Southern Africa
The British Geological Survey has posted an archive of grey literature on Southern African groundwater. Grey literature (or gray literature) is documents other than books or journal articles. It includes conference papers, pamphlets, unpublished reports, theses and dissertations, etc. It doesn’t always end up in libraries (or on the Internet), and even if it does, it doesn’t always get cataloged properly. In other words, it’s lost for all intents and purposes. I think this archive will be a real service to the people and nations of Southern Africa, who might not otherwise find this information about their own region.
(H/T Aquadoc at WaterWired)
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