Improving bibliographic records for the Alaska Region in the Integrated Resource Management Applications Data Store: Final project report

Johnson, Steven; Braund-Allen, Julianna

In 2011, the National Park Service began a two-year project with the Alaska Resources Library and Information Services (ARLIS) to remove duplicate records and to improve record quality for approximately 30,000 bibliographic records in the Alaska Data Store portion of NPS’s national database, the Natural Resources Information System (NRInfo; later renamed IRMA, the Integrated Resource Management Application). The goal was to have no duplicate records showing in the database and improvements made to the records that were retained. NPS had recognized that the Alaska Data Store contained an unacceptable proportion of duplicate records. These records occurred when personnel had not successfully checked the database for an existing record for an item before creating a new record for that same item. Also, the records originated in de-centralized databases on microcomputers maintained at each national park in Alaska. Each park’s copy of the database included records for items found at the park in which the database was created. Because many of these reports, journal articles, and other information sources were used in more than one park, separate records, often with differing information, had been created for the same items. When the databases were combined, and in the process of migrating the records first to the NatureBib platform and then to NRInfo/IRMA Datastore, duplicate references and their holdings were not condensed into single records. In addition, record quality had suffered because the database records had been added at the different parks by individuals without background training in bibliographic work. They also had worked without explicit guidelines for selecting among the multiple reference types available and for entering the bibliographic information in a standardized fashion within and across parks. During the fall of 2010, NPS and ARLIS began discussing how to identify duplicate records for removal from the Alaska Data Store, while also improving the quality of the remaining records. At that time, ARLIS estimated that 11 percent of the records were duplicates, based on its preliminary examination of every 100th record among the 8,800 records in the Southwest Alaska Network (SWAN) subset of the database. The project commenced in July 2011. ARLIS worked on exported records in Excel and EndNote formats, due to the non-availability of the multi-user software specified in the cooperative agreement. In autumn 2013, the database custodians at NPS Ft. Collins suppressed duplicate references based on reports supplied by ARLIS. NPS Ft. Collins then began updating Alaska’s remaining records to match ARLIS’ recommended content.

Improving bibliographic records for the Alaska Region in the Integrated Resource Management Applications Data Store: Final project report

Series

Collections