History
The Commission on Bibliography was established by the Federation
in December 1970 when Greg Middleton was appointed its Convenor.
For the next decade the Commission prepared abstracts of Australian
speleological literature which were published in Australian Speleo
Abstracts under an arrangement with the Sydney Speleological Society.
Initially bi-annual (1970-72), in 1973 ASA became annual and the
10th and last issue covered the 4-year period 1976-79. Most of those
issues and a comprehensive index are still available from Ross Ellis,
11 Arkana Street, Dundas NSW 2117 or
cel19110@bigpond.net.au
The Commission effectively went into hibernation in the 1980s and
early 90s but was revived again in 1998 to contribute abstracts
to the international bibliography provided by the International
Union of Speleology's Commission on Bibliography.
Activities
The Commission's mission, as specified by the Federation, is simply
"to compile indexes and/or abstracts of all published information
on Australian caves and cooperate with the same commission of the
International Union of Speleology". In practice the Commission interprets
this widely, dealing with anything published concerning karst, pseudokarst,
cavers and any other aspects of caves and karst in Oceania.
The Commission operates through a Convenor and a small but dedicated
group of people who read the speleological literature and compile
the abstracts.
In 2003 the abstractors were Ken Grimes, Jill Rowling, Mia Thurgate, Dave Smith (NZ) and Greg Middleton.
The abstracts
are prepared in a format specified by the IUS commission and sent
electronically to the Convenor. He edits them as necessary, compiles
them, tries to detect omissions and duplications and forwards the
consolidated abstracts annually to IUS' Bibliography Commission
in Switzerland. There they are combined with inputs from around
the world and published annually as Speleological Abstracts, or
Bulletin Bibliographique Spéléologique. These are now available
both as hard copy and on CD. A compilation CD is now available covering
the period 1988-1999 comprising some 60,000 abstracts. For full
details of the IUS Commission and its publications, go to www.isska.ch/bbs
or e-mail ssslib@vtx.ch
Contributors
Having more Australian abstractors would obviously reduce the workload
on the existing abstractors and also ensure better local coverage.
Contributions would be particularly welcome from Western Australia,
South Australia and Queensland, especially if they were prepared
to commit to covering a whole state or region.
The Task
IUS has provided guidelines for the preparation and compilation
of abstracts. These can be made available on request to anyone who
is interested. Dedicated database software can also be provided
to facilitate the task of preparation, transmission and compilation
of the abstracts. If you are interested please contact the Convenor
.
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