Bibliographies as an Extension Outreach Tool: An Old Method
in a New Age
Janet Webster
Associate Professor
Guin Library, Hatfield
Marine Science Center
Oregon State University
Newport, Oregon
Internet Address: janet.webster@oregonstate.edu
Introduction
The concept of bibliography, or the making of lists of information,
provides a useful tool for Extension people. Careful selection of information
sources can take the chaos out of the world of information for an audience
and deliver focused information effectively. Adding annotations or abstracts
helps the reader decide whether to seek more or be satisfied with the succinct
summary.
Many already create bibliographies and just do not call them
that. Scientists keep electronic lists of their reprints filed in their offices.
Extension agents put together lists of useful publications for their clientele
(Conway, Corcoran, Duncan, & Ketchum, 1997; Hilderbrand, 2001.) Librarians
print out selected sources from electronic indexes to help students find
relevant material.
In each of these examples, the creator is selecting information
and presenting it in a usable format. Their purpose is to help people find
relevant information, consequently facilitating the transfer of information
(Harmon, 1998; Radhakrishna & Thomson, 1996.) This parallels Extension's
focus on "reaching people with research-based information in a timely
manner" (Scholl, 1994.)
Typically, Extension personnel take the most relevant information
and weave it into a bulletin or fact sheet. It gets printed, posted to the
World Wide Web, or directly distributed to constituents via email. The first
step, though, is the creation of a bibliography, or the making of a list
of the information the agent wants to use. Increased electronic access to
information makes it easier for Extension agents to find and compile sources.
It is also easier to get carried away and gather too much or include inappropriate
sources. Information is everywhere--good information is harder to find.
Creating lists of information has new possibilities with the
Web as a delivery mechanism. The static lists or bibliographies of past decades
now can be dynamic, with links to full text of the documents cited or to
online requests for more information. The Web-based bibliography becomes
a gateway to more information as well as a concise overview of a subject.
It saves the public's time by pointing them to useful and relevant information
on a subject. Creating bibliographies saves the Extension agent's time by
providing a framework for collecting and organizing information on enduring
or "hot" topics.
As a librarian working with Extension people, I have worked on
two projects involving selecting and providing access to information. A bibliography
was one of our end products, and the process of creating the bibliography
became an outreach tool. (For a basic explanation of why and how to create
a bibliography, see my Tools of the Trade article in this issue, "How
to Create a Bibliography.") This article uses the two projects as case
studies to explore how to create and use bibliographies as effective Extension
outreach tools.
The Projects and Their Bibliographic Issues
The two projects, the Yaquina Bay Bibliography and the Seafood
Wastewater Bibliography, differ in their intent, design, and distribution,
yet share challenges in their creation. The Yaquina Bay Bibliography catalogues
the research on this Oregon estuary while describing its environmental history.
The original intent was to collect comprehensively on this discrete geographic
area. As the project developed, the project staff realized the bibliography's
potential as a means for exploring natural resource issues. This expansion
of intent posed challenges:
- How
to define the geographic area, watershed versus estuary, and
- How
to promote the use of the bibliography by those outside of the university,
in this case, the watershed council members and interested citizens.
The second project, the Seafood Wastewater Bibliography, is a
more typical Extension tool, a listing of selected best practices and important
information on a "hot" topic. Here, the project staff was challenged
with deciding if Web-based access to citations information is an effective
tool for the target audience. Other Extension projects have had mixed results
with Web delivery (Taylor & Curtis, 1999; Walker & Holden, 2000;
Swann & Einstein, 2000; Rodewald, 2001) and some excellent results with
direct email (Siegrist et al., 1998). Consistently effective delivery of
Extension information over the Web proves elusive.
Challenges aside, both bibliography projects illustrate how an
Extension agent can use an old tool to do the following:
- Address
narrow as well as broad topics,
- Focus
on the changing needs of your audience, and
- Experiment
with delivery of information in multiple formats.
Compiling the bibliographies takes time, expertise, and commitment.
Many have written on the mechanics of compiling a bibliography (Bates, 1976;
Robinson, 1966; Krummel, 1984; Jacsó & Lancaster, 1999.) These tend to
be complicated treatises on the art of bibliography from passionate practitioners,
full of useful insights and procedures, but difficult to directly apply to
the Extension work.
In brief, here are the major issues to consider:
- Audience: Who
is your audience, what type of information do they want, and how do they
want it?
- Current
state of the information: Has the information already been collected,
and does enough information exist to justify your effort?
- Scope
and coverage: What is your topic, where are you going to look for
information, and how you going to select it?
- Content
and style: How will you describe,
enhance, organize, distribute, and maintain the information?
These are not trivial or simple issues. The more time spent addressing
them at the beginning of the project, the smoother the information gathering
and actual making of the bibliography will be. Below, the Yaquina Bay Bibliography
and the Seafood Wastewater Bibliography describe how these four issues can
be addressed, and bibliographies developed as Extension tools.
The Audience
Researchers of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well
as faculty and students at Oregon State University (OSU) needed to know what
research had been conducted on the local estuary, Yaquina Bay. It would help
them identify environmental benchmarks and plan new projects. The local watershed
council was also interested in having a better understanding of the watershed
and how it had changed over time.
The Current State of Information
Several print bibliographies existed, one specifically on Yaquina
Bay and another on estuaries of Oregon. Though dated, both covered important
material and made good starting points. They also gave the project staff
a sense of how much material was available, making it easier to gauge the
time and effort needed.
Scope and Coverage
This was meant to be a comprehensive bibliography on the natural
environment of the Yaquina Bay and its watershed. This broad scope included
the obvious fieldwork, laboratory experiments using animals from the Bay,
and demographic studies showing human pressure on the ecosystem. The time
period was from the first published scientific reports (surveys in the 1860s)
to the present. The geographic scope was the Yaquina Bay and River to tidewater.
Content and Style
ProCite®, a common bibliographic software was used to enter and
organize the information. The existing ProCite® templates worked well except
for government documents, theses, and unpublished agency reports, and these
templates were adapted to ease data entry. Each citation contains at least
one general subject keyword (Biological, Physical, Geologic or Chemical),
one geographic keyword, and at least two other subject keywords. Researchers
in the EPA requested the inclusion of the general keywords, because they
wanted to be able to do quick, broad searches as well as more selective ones.
Abstracts were not included because of copyright concerns and lack of time
to create original ones.
Initially, the bibliography was available as a ProCite® file
to those with this software and as a text file on the Web. When Reference
WebPoster® was developed, this inexpensive software was loaded on an NT server,
and now users have a simple search engine for the bibliography.
The Audience
The people working in the seafood industry in the West Coast
of the United State and Canada face pressure to handle the wastewater issue
better. These are very busy, working people with good on-line access but
little time to find information and often little access to current scientific
information. They want solutions, and many turn to their Extension agents
for help. Sea Grant Extension agents in Oregon and Alaska identified a need
for an overview of best practices for handling seafood wastewater. One agent
and I decided to explore providing those people direct access to current
thinking on best practices.
The Current State of Information
Little has been done to pull together information on wastewater
practices in the seafood industry. Ken Hilderbrand, an Oregon Sea Grant Extension
specialist, maintains a list of information on seafood waste and composting,
but this does not include material on the water stream (2001). Information
exists in other sectors of the food industry that is relevant to the problems
faced by the seafood industry.
Scope and Coverage
This selective bibliography attempts to collect documents that
would give a user a basic understanding of the processes and the issues of
seafood wastewater. Some resources with more specific information addressing
a particular species or treatment technique are also included. Most of the
material has been published since 1970, with older material if still relevant.
While the Pacific Northwest and Alaska are the geographic areas of most interest,
often material from other parts of the world are useful.
Content and Style
Again, the bibliographic software, ProCite®, was used fairly
easily. As much bibliographic information as possible was entered, and downloaded
citations were verified and enhanced. Abstracts were downloaded when available
without copyright issues. Keywords were added after creating a relevant thesaurus
combining terms from the Water Resources Abstracts Thesaurus and
the Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts Thesaurus.
Challenges and Observations
Defining the Scope
While the scope of each
project appears by its title to be quite precise, both were problematic.
The graduate student working on the Yaquina Bay project and I ran into
problems of where to set the geographic boundaries because we felt those
would define the geographic scope of the bibliography. Because the Yaquina
Bay's watershed is extensive, we decided a focus on the estuary and tidal
river was appropriate for this project. Consequently, forestry material
not directly related to the water and any information outside of the Bay
entrance is not included.
These decisions evolved as we worked. So the process was not
neat, and the scope was somewhat fluid. More documentation of decisions would
have been useful, providing future users a firm understanding of what is
included and what is not.
Creating a selective bibliography is more difficult than creating
a comprehensive one because you need to choose, though it is easier in that
you do not have to gather as much or worry about missing something. My colleagues
and I struggled with our selection criteria for the Seafood Wastewater Bibliography
and still are not sure if we have winnowed down the bibliography to the best
information on current practices.
A graduate student with a background in environmental science
and librarianship did much of the selection. He began with the contents of
an Extension agent's file drawer and then explored other resources. In hindsight,
because expertise is critical, we should have spent more time as a project
group selecting what to include. Instead, we continue to review the bibliography's
coverage for quality and relevance.
Keywords and Thesauri
Creating lists of keywords also proved challenging for both projects.
For the Yaquina Bay Bibliography, we initially built a list by entering the
theses and dissertations, and seeing what we needed for coverage. Usage of
common names versus scientific names also was a decision point; we included
both. Subject keywords were checked against an existing thesaurus, Aquatic
Science and Fisheries Abstracts Thesaurus.
Sometimes we could find appropriate terms, and other times, not. In the Seafood
Wastewater project, we found conflicts between and gaps within the two thesauri
used. For example, one uses ground fish, while the other uses bottom fish.
In both projects, we struggled with whether to use natural language
keywords, words that the general public or a non-librarian would probably
use, or stick with those found in the thesaurus. Deciding which to use meant
a decision as to what our audience would use. Keeping the audience in mind
helped resolve issues. Our lists of
keywords changed and grew over time. More work could have been done in the
beginning to avoid some of the pitfalls.
Usage
The Yaquina Bay Bibliography has proven to be very useful to
the researchers and local managers, especially the local watershed council
and students beginning research projects. Because we worked with the information
in hand to do the entry, a copy of all that is listed is available in the
library. Users cannot only find the citation to some obscure piece of information;
they can get their hands on that information. The same is true for the wastewater
material.
People are beginning to expect access to the full-text and not
just a citation. Eventually, we hope to link the bibliographies' citations
to the full-text of items when possible. Given
copyright and technical issues, providing the full-text electronically will
be an interesting project for librarians and Extension agents.
The Seafood Wastewater Bibliography is an example of the conundrum
mentioned earlier: if you create the bibliography, will it get used, and
if you do not create it, you will never know. As we developed this resource,
we did limited testing of it with potential users to see if the format worked
and the concept was attractive. Our results were mixed; there was enthusiasm
for the concept, but little obvious support for more development. This is
puzzling and a bit discouraging. The project group still believes the need
exists from conversations with people in the seafood industry.
Expenses, Maintenance, and the Future
The original grant for the Yaquina Bay Bibliography was $14,500,
and this funded a graduate student's time for a year. Over 1100 citations
have been entered, and it is updated quarterly. A clickable map has been
developed, giving geo-spatial access in a visual manner rather than just
having the Web-searchable access to the bibliography. Producing similar bibliographies
on each of Oregon's estuaries would provide tools for planning research and
restoring watersheds.
Costs on the Seafood Wastewater Bibliography were similar in
scale. Although this was a more focused and shorter bibliography, more time
was spent exploring the problems of reaching the target audience and getting
feedback through presentations and interviews.
We are writing an Extension bulletin using the information gathered
and will see if a text summary is a better delivery mechanism than a list
of relevant resources. We are also working on two more short bibliographies
to see if a critical mass needs to exist before an electronic resource is
used consistently, if people just need time to get used to a product, or
if they still prefer to call their local agent. We remain convinced that
the need exists for timely information for the industry but realize that
how to provide it is the challenge, as others have pointed out (Shih & Evans,
1991; Kuhlthau, 1999; Rodewald, 2001.)
Conclusion
Creating relevant and timely bibliographies is a useful tool
in Extension work. The compiler gains more familiarity with the information
on a subject, and that familiarity can lead to better communication with
constituents. So the process as well as the product is useful.
Creating bibliographies are not without their challenges, however.
Describing the scope clearly and knowing the audience have always been issues
for Extension. With changing demographics, awareness of who your audience
is and how they use information becomes even more important for effective
Extension work (Westbrook, 1995.) Being disciplined in the collection and
entry of citations remains a critical component in producing a relevant resource
list. The advent of more electronic information and the proliferation of "experts" suggest
the increased importance of the Extension agent's expertise.
Finally, figuring out the best means of distribution requires
attention to the skills and needs of your audience. Web-based delivery may
be easy for those who provide information; however, more research is needed
in how to do it effectively to reach the target audience (Wang, Tenopir,
Layman, Pennlman, & Collins, 1998).
Extension work in this century will rely on new delivery methods
while using traditional and proven tools (Ezell, 1989; Donaldson, 1998.)
Extension agents will look more broadly for new collaborators to explore
projects, work on products, and assist in evaluation. Remember that your
librarian may be a very willing collaborator who is interested in helping
you and your clientele find and use information efficiently and effectively.
Acknowledgments
Oregon Sea Grant and the Environmental Protection Agency funded
the Yaquina Bay Bibliography. Oregon and California Sea Grant, the Oregon
Economic Development Department, and interested industry partners funded
the Seafood Wastewater Bibliography. Many thanks to Heather Hiveley and Larry
Schmidt, who worked on these projects as graduate students. Thanks also to
Ed Kolbe, Sea Grant Regional Engineering Specialist, and Brian Paust, Alaska
Sea Grant, for their expertise, interest, and support.
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This article is online at http://www.joe.org/joe/2003june/a7.shtml.
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