Post by L Roebuck on Mar 6, 2006 17:50:20 GMT -5
Group gathers to discuss Cave, Karst Portal
By Karen Polly
Current-Argus Staff Writer
Jan 21, 2006, 06:00 am
CARLSBAD -- Almost 30 librarians, karst researchers and other scientists are meeting this weekend at the Advanced Manufacturing and Innovation Training Center for a workshop to discuss the development of a Web portal for all things related to caves and karst.
Louise Hose, director of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute based in Carlsbad, said a Web portal for karst would contain data, literature, images and scientific tools for researchers, educators, students, land managers and other government employees.
A Web portal offers an array of resources and services -- most Internet search engines, such as Yahoo!, have transformed themselves into Web portals to attract and keep a wider audience.
Karst is irregular limestone in which erosion has formed fissures, sinkholes, caverns and underground streams.
Hose said although the University of South Florida, University of New Mexico and NCKRI are the partners on the karst portal project, they hope to involve other organizations in the project soon.
"We'd love to have more people come in on it," she said.
The portal will be known as the Karst Information Portal, or KIP, Hose said.
She said the group is already interested in putting some information on the Web, but noted that it is easier to make a Web site than a comfortable, user-friendly portal linking to information and services.
Even scientists who are not strictly interested in the geology of karst and caves have an interest in a Web portal, she said.
Los Alamos National Laboratory sent representatives to attend some of the sessions because the lab is interested in developing an image identification technology that would compare one image against others in a Web-based database in order to find similar images.
Diana Northup -- whose background as both a UNM librarian and a biologist gave her particular interest in the karst Web portal -- said it is difficult to find karst information.
Much of what has been written resides in private libraries, she said, adding that she has made it a personal project to catalog what is available.
Another benefit of a karst Web portal, Northup said, would be creating links between scientists throughout the world in order to share information.
"It's also about providing linkages between scientists," Northup said.
Leslie Melim, a geologist from Western Illinois University, said putting some of the information on the Web would also help to save it. If a fire or flood were to destroy any library that contained karst information, that information could be lost forever because often there is only one copy of a research paper.
Northup and Melim agreed they would like to develop a Web portal in order to provide resources, collaborate through cyberspace, preserve research and data, and make tools available for further research. The ultimate goal, Northup said, is to improve scientific research.
Andrej Mihevc, a scientist from Slovenia, made a presentation Friday about the Karst Research Institute of Slovenia, where he works.
While Mihevc said he could not say how many items the library of the Slovenian institute has, he said his organization has cave and karst information dating back to before World War I.
David Weary, a geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, told those gathered for the workshop that the government is interested in karst because it manages a lot of land upon which there are caves and karst. He heads a team that is working to develop a map of karst areas within the United States.
"It's a very obvious potential part of the portal program," Hose said of the USGS karst map.
Scientists were not the only participants in the portal workshop.
Bernard Szukalski, the cave and karst solutions manager for Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc., said he traveled to Carlsbad because his company's software has been used to implement other portals, especially geospatial portals such as www.geodata.gov.
Szukalski said that many times, location is a key factor in a search. For instance, he said, if a researcher wanted to locate all of the research done in the area of the Permian Basin, they would need a Web portal that could sort items by location.
www.currentargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060121/NEWS01/601210301/1001/ARCHIVE
Additional Non-NSS Link:
Karst Information Portal (KIP) www.lib.usf.edu/KIP/
National Cave and Karst Research Institute Monthly Report January 2006
www.lib.usf.edu/KIP/docs/general/NCKRI_Report_01-06.pdf
By Karen Polly
Current-Argus Staff Writer
Jan 21, 2006, 06:00 am
CARLSBAD -- Almost 30 librarians, karst researchers and other scientists are meeting this weekend at the Advanced Manufacturing and Innovation Training Center for a workshop to discuss the development of a Web portal for all things related to caves and karst.
Louise Hose, director of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute based in Carlsbad, said a Web portal for karst would contain data, literature, images and scientific tools for researchers, educators, students, land managers and other government employees.
A Web portal offers an array of resources and services -- most Internet search engines, such as Yahoo!, have transformed themselves into Web portals to attract and keep a wider audience.
Karst is irregular limestone in which erosion has formed fissures, sinkholes, caverns and underground streams.
Hose said although the University of South Florida, University of New Mexico and NCKRI are the partners on the karst portal project, they hope to involve other organizations in the project soon.
"We'd love to have more people come in on it," she said.
The portal will be known as the Karst Information Portal, or KIP, Hose said.
She said the group is already interested in putting some information on the Web, but noted that it is easier to make a Web site than a comfortable, user-friendly portal linking to information and services.
Even scientists who are not strictly interested in the geology of karst and caves have an interest in a Web portal, she said.
Los Alamos National Laboratory sent representatives to attend some of the sessions because the lab is interested in developing an image identification technology that would compare one image against others in a Web-based database in order to find similar images.
Diana Northup -- whose background as both a UNM librarian and a biologist gave her particular interest in the karst Web portal -- said it is difficult to find karst information.
Much of what has been written resides in private libraries, she said, adding that she has made it a personal project to catalog what is available.
Another benefit of a karst Web portal, Northup said, would be creating links between scientists throughout the world in order to share information.
"It's also about providing linkages between scientists," Northup said.
Leslie Melim, a geologist from Western Illinois University, said putting some of the information on the Web would also help to save it. If a fire or flood were to destroy any library that contained karst information, that information could be lost forever because often there is only one copy of a research paper.
Northup and Melim agreed they would like to develop a Web portal in order to provide resources, collaborate through cyberspace, preserve research and data, and make tools available for further research. The ultimate goal, Northup said, is to improve scientific research.
Andrej Mihevc, a scientist from Slovenia, made a presentation Friday about the Karst Research Institute of Slovenia, where he works.
While Mihevc said he could not say how many items the library of the Slovenian institute has, he said his organization has cave and karst information dating back to before World War I.
David Weary, a geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, told those gathered for the workshop that the government is interested in karst because it manages a lot of land upon which there are caves and karst. He heads a team that is working to develop a map of karst areas within the United States.
"It's a very obvious potential part of the portal program," Hose said of the USGS karst map.
Scientists were not the only participants in the portal workshop.
Bernard Szukalski, the cave and karst solutions manager for Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc., said he traveled to Carlsbad because his company's software has been used to implement other portals, especially geospatial portals such as www.geodata.gov.
Szukalski said that many times, location is a key factor in a search. For instance, he said, if a researcher wanted to locate all of the research done in the area of the Permian Basin, they would need a Web portal that could sort items by location.
www.currentargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060121/NEWS01/601210301/1001/ARCHIVE
Additional Non-NSS Link:
Karst Information Portal (KIP) www.lib.usf.edu/KIP/
National Cave and Karst Research Institute Monthly Report January 2006
www.lib.usf.edu/KIP/docs/general/NCKRI_Report_01-06.pdf
Got a bad feeling after reading this. Am I getting this right? They want cavers to just hand over the cave data to the US DOI / NCKRI that we have worked so hard to collect.