USF's Gulf Oil Spill Information Center: a Q&A
By David Rapp Jul 6, 2010By the end of April, it had become clear that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill had become an ongoing disaster for the Gulf region. A huge amount of information emerged about the spill nationwide, dispersed among mass media, government agencies, research papers, and other sources.
The University of South Florida (USF) Tampa Library, located just a few hundred miles from the source of the spill, had had experience in building online resources on environmental subjects, often involving "gray literature," specialized materials not easily found via conventional publishers, such as research papers or technical reports.
So Todd Chavez, the director of academic resources at USF Libraries, began sketching out a framework for a wide-ranging online Gulf Oil Spill Information Center (GOSIC), an impartial, up-to-date information resource, drawing together disparate strands of oil-spill information into one online location.
Chavez and USF librarian Vera Lux collaborated to get GOSIC up and running by mid-June, and it's been expanding ever since. They plan to collaborate on GOSIC with other universities, as well aim to evolve the site into an academic research portal. LJ asked Chavez some questions about the ambitious project:
LJ: How does GOSIC compare with other online resources you've created?
Chavez: This project is similar to four others we've either completed or are in the process of completing since 2004, when we began to emphasize building online resources and collections that support researchers targeting global environmental subjects.
They include the Karst Information Portal, Cave Minerals of the World (in progress), the Bibliography of Speleothem [cave formation] Research (in progress), and the Monteverde Research Institute Archives (three collections accessible here).
These projects all share one thing in common: information contained in gray literature is critical to understanding the field. Libraries have struggled with gray literature-acquiring, organizing, and contextualizing in particular-yet it is an important component to research in many disciplines. The Karst Information Portal, the most mature project we are leading, is nearly 70 percent "gray." We believe that GOSIC will follow suit, particularly in the early phases.
What are the prospects for collaboration?
To date, I've approached the deans of the libraries at the University of Florida, Florida State, Florida International University, and Florida Atlantic. I want to contact librarians at LSU [Louisiana State University] and the University of West Florida in the coming week.
[Update: LSU Libraries also provides an oil-spill information center on their website.]
Dr. William Miller at Florida Atlantic University responded positively and has identified a point person. We also contacted personnel at the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] and faculty in several USF departments who are working on the response. Collaboration roles will range from assisting with information collection to technology assistance to providing expertise to contextualize the collection.
How would a research portal differ?
What is currently visible is the tip of the iceberg. We have an off-line archive that contains much more information that requires vetting prior to our mounting it to the site.
We are now getting the data that we need to take the project to the next level. Last week, we initiated discussions with scientists in several key departments at USF to contribute their data to the project. We plan to hold it as they prepare funding proposals for long-term projects.
What else would be needed?
We've also initiated discussions with major publishers to obtain permission to offer published research concerning this event, as an open-access collection via the site. I arranged to have a graduate student and a team of librarians begin comprehensive literature reviews concerning other oil spills that are relevant to this catastrophe. We will "package" them as catalysts for research into the future.
Once we can effectively combine the gray information (speeches, press releases, images, maps, etc.) with a curated collection of data and the published research, we will consider the project a research portal. That will take some time unless funding is forthcoming. And we will pursue external funding. At this point, I suspect that the evolution from an information center to a research portal will commence this month and proceed for a year or more.
