Bibliography of Arctic Research

Abstract

... This Project was set up in June 1947, as a three-year program to produce a comprehensive bibliography of Arctic research publications. It has a Directing Committee of leading scientists and librarians of United States and Canada, in touch with current research programs of private and governmental agencies, several themselves with field experience in the North. The Committee determines policies in the preparation of the Bibliography and its members act in an advisory capacity to the Project staff in the various scientific fields represented in the literature. The staff comprises a Director, three research analysts, all experienced librarians, and three assistants at the Project headquarters, also several contributing analysts. This staff includes specialists in the principal foreign languages, Scandinavian, Russian, German and French, experienced in the principal sciences, zoology, botany, geology, meteorology, oceanography, etc., and familiar with the collections of the principal libraries of the United States, Canada and Europe. The Project headquarters is in Washington, in space generously made available by the Library of Congress. The Project is financed by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the U.S. Department of the Army and by the Canadian Government. It is sponsored by, and its funds are administered by, the Arctic Institute of North America. The scope of the bibliography is broad geographically, covering Alaska, northern Canada (and Labrador), Greenland, Svalbard, northern Scandinavia and U.S.S.R. and Kamchatka, the Arctic Seas and Straits and the North Polar Basin. In subject matter the range is also wide, including geography, geology, geophysics, meteorology, oceanography, botany, zoology, anthropology, medicine, administration and government. The Project in fact, includes the various disciplines which are our avenues of approach to an understanding of the arctic world, its physical features, indigenous life, and its resources in terms of our civilization, and not least the discipline by which we may utilize these resources and adapt ourselves to the conditions of the Arctic. ... For a project so broad in scope the literature is obviously immense; in so limited a time some selection is necessary. The Directing Committee and Project Staff in consultation, decided to place primary emphasis on publications giving the explorers' and scientists' own record of their work in the area of interest, results of expeditions and investigations as produced by their members; then emphasis on government reports, then on discussions in publications of learned societies and scientific institutions devoted to arctic work, and so on. The Bibliography is designed to contain as much of the original records of arctic research and exploration as may be analysed and indexed in three years' time. ...