This Bulletin announces new important information resources.
1. Speleogenesis Network website:
1. Speleogenesis Network website:
The site is a result of an evolution of the Speleogenesis site, which combined an online scientific journal (Speleogenesis and Evolution of Karst Aquifers, www.speleogenesis.info) and a number of features serving information needs of the cave and karst science community.
With the growth of services and functions supporting information exchange and international collaboration it became obvious that we need to separate them from the journal. The Speleogenesis Network site is a new open-access platform designed to aid integrated efforts of the international cave and karst community in promoting information exchange, supporting new online-based research projects and establishing collaborative initiatives. All major information services from www.speleogenesis.info have been transferred to the www.network.speleogenesis.info and considerably improved. The Speleogenesis Network website has many new features and capacities.
It is a contribution of the UIS KHS Commission to international efforts on promoting communication and cooperation in cave and karst science. We are happy to launch the Speleogenesis Network site a week before the coming Karst-2007 Conference in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where major international groups will discuss how to promote an international cooperation in our field. We hope that the capacities of the new site will serve this need.
Probably the most valuable new resource incorporated into the site is the KarstBase - a new initiative and a fully functional system to create and maintain a comprehensive online bibliography database in our field:
http://www.network.speleogenesis.info/directory/bibliography/karstbase/index.php
There are currently almost 9.000 searchable references in KarstBase. It offers a number of ways for the community members to contribute to the database via online submission, so we hope it will grow quickly into a major resource for Cave/Karst bibliography.
2. Karst Information Portal (KIP):
http://www.karstportal.org
There is a big ongoing effort of the American core group to promote this new resource and make it international. Despite of some similarities between goals and functions of KIP and the Speleogenesis Network, the two sites do not compete. We coordinate things in both organizational and technical aspects to make the two sites complementary to each other. KIP has a broader scope and hopefully will play a major repository role in integrating existing resources in the whole field of cave and karst science, while Speleogenesis Network is biased to karst and geospeleology areas and intends to be more like a test ground for new projects and initiatives.
No comments:
Post a Comment