Although the sourcs and processes used to build each subject collection vary, the process used for the Wastewater collection is representative. Larry Schmidt, a library school graduate student with a masters degree in environmental engineering, gleaned material from many sources using various searching techniques. Ed Kolbe and Janet Webster provided guidance and suggestions.

General information on seafood processing was found in the Oregon State University collection that provided needed background on. Ed Kolbe's personal seafood processing technology collection was perused and found to include unique and hard-to-find material on waste and wastewater treatment issues. Larry checked the bibliographies of material from these two collections and tracked down promising items. After assembling this core of materials, he searched the following online databases: Agricola, Food Science and Technology Abstracts, Aquatic Science and Fisheries Abstracts, Environmental Sciences & Pollution Management, Water Resources, WorldCat, ArticleFirst, Applied Sciences & Technology Abstracts. Larry also checked the internet for relevant sources.

Searching strategies included keyword searches, subject searches and author searches. The keyword search was prepared ahead time using four categories divided into specific keywords. This first search concentrated on the following databases, Environment, Agricola and GenSciAbs for records between 1970-2000.

Category Keyword 1 Keyword 2 Keyword 3 Keyword 4
Subject 1 Fishery Fisheries Shellfish Seafood
Subject 2 Processing Canneries Cannery
Subject 3 Wastewater Effluent Stick-water Waste
Subject 4 Treatment Disposal Conservation

We started the search by entering "fishery and processing and wastewater" (Keyword 1). This query located some useful material but it was not enough. We then began to look through the keywords in the descriptor fields and found some differences. At this point we used the Boolean operator phrase, "(fisheries or fishery or seafood) and (processing or cannery) and (wastewater or effluent or stick-water)". In this case, we received many more documents then we needed and the subject area was too wide. To narrow down the amount of material we added the keyword "treatment" a nd came up with 45 articles of which 40 were potentially relevant. At this point, we decided to look at the descriptor fields and the thesaurus to see if we had missed anything. We discovered keyword phrases that could be used such as, processing fishery products, food processing industry wastes and others. A subject search using "fishery processing industries and effluent and treatment" produced o nly 12 results most of which were sources uncovered during the keyword search. I will also try to use more of the pearl growing techniques and keywords or phrases found in this search.

After the initial database search, we searched the Internet. A search using the terms developed in the database search produced irrelevant mostly for industry sites trying to sell their products. Using Lycos we searched for "seafood and processing and wastewater" as my Boolean search phrase under the expert search option. The hits produced some useful information and web-sites. These were Alaska Seafood Main Page, Sea Grant News Media Center and some others. This search also produced a personal resume page, State Permits and regulations for South Carolina and other extraneous sites. We looked at the web pages for sites that we knew were good and tried to find the key terms by looking at "view source". We were able to find the term used by an International Organization that deals with all aspects of marine fisheries. The term was "international fisheries and aquatic research", and, when used in Lycos the desired web page was retrieved. This shows how problematic web searches can be; you should not have to know the exact phrase to get to the desired webpage, but that is how I ended up getting to oneFish (Support unit for the International Fisheries and Aquatic Research) website.

The evolution and application of the keywords for the wastewater section are discussed on the keyword page.


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