Project Proposal for Adding Selected Meteorological Materials from EAPS August 2011
Submitted by Chris Sherratt, Librarian for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, in consultation with
Michelle Baildon, Librarian for History, Anthropology, Science, Technology & Society, and Philosophy
Introduction and Summary of the Collection
In April 2011, MIT Professor Kerry Emanuel, Director of the EAPS’ Program on Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate (PAOC) contacted me about a collection of gray literature housed in Building 54, gathered throughout the career of the late Fred Sanders, MIT Professor Emeritus of Meteorology. MIT’s Tech Talk [i|#edn1] described Fred as “mentor and friend to an entire generation of weather researchers…. pre-eminent in the field of synoptic meteorology.” This is evident by the countries and authors the reports represent: the best programs in the field and pioneers in it. My colleagues Michelle Baildon and Jinny Nathans, AMS Archivist, share my recommendation that the Libraries accept items from this collection that are a key part of climate history. A recent news post from FECYT, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, reported on a recent study in _Climate Research and stated ”… the scientific community today is only able to access and analyse 20% of the recorded climate information held. The remaining data are not accessible in digital format.”[ii|#_edn2]
Most of the material in this collection is not only not digitized; much of it is not easily found in print. The main components (approximately 30 shelves):
- Non-U.S. meteorological serials from government agencies or universities, e.g. Great Britain, Norway (3 shelves)
- Atmospheric science serials, not digitized, from top rated meteorological departments of US universities: e.g. Chicago, CSU, UCLA, Washington, NYU (8 shelves; some have entries in Barton )
- Technical reports foundational in the discipline: e.g. Air Force Geophysical Lab, Hanscom AFB; ECOM (Ft. Huachuca); Air Force technical weather reports; MIT’s Round Hill experiments; Harvard’s Blue Hill Observatory. (6 shelves)
- Important documents of international experiments and organizations: e.g. GARP, GATT, NCAR, WMO documents (6 shelves)
- Early non-yet-digitized publications from NOAA and the US Weather Bureau (4 shelves)
- Monographs and parts of serials not categorized above which we need (3 shelves)
Reasons and Criteria for Adding Material
It’s important to understand that in early years, meteorological data and research was shared in the exchange of papers and reports, and sometimes only in these reports. In A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Climate Change (2010, MIT Press), Paul Edwards, Associate Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, writes
Gray literature…has considerable importance in meteorology and is often cited in journal literature. Yet laying hands on any of the gray literature published before 1995 is remarkably difficult. There are only a few well-stocked meteorological libraries in North America, and probably no more than two dozen in the whole world. [iii|#_edn3]
Because MIT was the first academic department in U.S. meteorology; it continues to lead in the field; no adequate disciplinary digital repository exists; and print holdings of these items across the nation’s libraries are not adequate or visible, I recommend the Libraries add selected items from this collection to our holdings. These reports are often the only source to pinpoint specific sites of experiments (such as MIT’s Round Hill); find detailed methodologies; or find certain climatic data.
Recommended criteria for inclusion in the gift are:
- Item reports research results, is a scholarly treatment, and is not owned by MIT. Caveat: if item is part of a foreign serial and is owned by Harvard but not MIT, we won’t add.
- Item ‘s full text is not available digitally in HathiTrust or other repository such as NASA, Open Sky (for NCAR work), Michigan’s Deep Blue, or Colorado State.
- Item is “hard-to-find.” Examples would be historical, classified climatic reports from WW2 on various locations around the world; MIT and Harvard technical reports we don’t own; reports from Air Force Technical Weather Service; original documents from pioneers such as Bjerknes, Thompson, Charney, or Rossby.
Recommended Next Steps
During the summer, collection size was reduced by several shelves according to the above criteria. A small amount of searching remains to be done. Next steps include:
- Review the discarded material with Professor Emanuel and suggest he offer to other repositories if appropriate.
- Consult with CSM, AMES, and IDLA on best ways to house and maximize bibliographic access to items: e.g. cataloging and storage options. Consider how to shelve or treat reports with multiple report numbers.[iv|#_edn4]
- Hire a student to finish searching material and arrange technical and university reports in order. (100 hours)
- Consult Archives on material appropriate to their collections, if any. Consult with staff in DOME about possible items to digitize, such as MIT project reports not yet in HathiTrust.
- Implement plans to remove materials from Building 54 and add to Libraries.
Conclusion
Paul Edwards writes of climate history, Scientists are always opening it up again, rummaging around in there to find out more about how old numbers were made. New metadata beget new data models; those data models, in turn, generate new pictures of the past.[v|#_edn5]
Brunet and Jones say, To bring these historical data into the 21st century is, therefore, not only important for better adaption within countries to the impacts of climate variability and change, but also to ensure that the painstaking atmospheric monitoring carried out in the past is not lost forever.[vi|#_edn6]
We now have an opportunity to enhance access to key climatic material for MIT and researchers elsewhere, and we hope the Libraries will agree.
[i|#_ednref1] “Fred Sanders, pioneer storm forecaster, dies” MIT Tech Talk, November 1, 2006. Accessed May 31, 2011 at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/obit-sanders.html.
[ii|#_ednref2] “80 percent of the world’s climate data are not computerized.” http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-07/f-sf-8ow072011.php. Accessed July 21, 2011.
[iii|#_ednref3] Edwards, Paul. A Vast Machine: computer models, climate data, and the politics of global warming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.
[iv|#_ednref4] Farace, Dominic. “Rise of the Phoenix: A review of new forms and exploitations of grey literature.” +Publishing Research Quarterly, +Summer 1997 p.71.
[v|#_ednref5] Edwards, p. 432.
v Brunet, Manola and Phil Jones. “Data rescue initiatives: bringing historical climate data into the 21st century.” Climate Research 47: 29--40, 201
APPENDIX 1
Overview of Meteorology at MIT
Atmospheric science at MIT has a long and storied history. Begun as a “Course” in the Department of Aeronautical Engineering by the famous Carl G. Rossby in 1928, it was thought to be “the first professional program in meteorology offered in an American Institution of higher learning.”[v] It grew to departmental status by 1939 and in 1941 became the Department of Meteorology. Karl Compton, President of MIT, served on the U.S. Meteorological Advisory Committee in 1934, which studied the Weather Bureau and current research underway at the time. Some years later, MIT hosted one of the meteorological training programs to serve our military. During World War II, between 7000 and 10,000 American students completed this education; 994 at MIT to be exact. (Dizikes) The military has always needed a strong weather component; soon after WW II, the Air Weather Service of the Air Force was the world’s largest. (Edwards)
The meteorology faculty at MIT was always a “Who’s Who” of notable pioneers in the field. Besides Rossby, the Department was home to the talents of Jerome Namais, Hurd Willett, Sverre Petterssen, Henry Houghton, Jule Charney, Victor Starr, and Edward Lorenz to name only a few. A sampling of their connections were the famous Bergen School, von Neuman’s work in Princeton on the Meteorology Project using the ENIAC computer, and the Geophysics Research Directorate at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center at Hanscomb AFB. Synoptic meteorology, mapping, analysis, numerical weather prediction and other topics advanced greatly through faculty efforts. MIT was the home for multiple “Projects”: Planetary Circulation, Synoptic Climatology, and General Circulation. In 1957, the Department of Meteorology moved from the School of Engineering to the School of Science, and in 1983, then known as the Department of Meteorology and Physical Oceanography, it merged with Earth and Planetary Sciences to form what we now know as EAPS.
Dizikes, Peter. “Wind, war and weathermen: How a Swedish bon vivant let MIT introduce modern meteorology to America — just in time to help the Allies win World War II.” MIT News Office. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/timeline-forecasting-0607.html. Accessed June 8, 2011.
Edwards, Paul. A Vast Machine: computer models, climate data, and the politics of global warming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.
APPENDIX 2
Other Preservation efforts in this field, very briefly explored
Center for Research Libraries
In May, 2011, the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) announced its work with the California Digital Library
to develop a Print Archives Preservation Registry (PAPR). PAPR will support research library and consortial efforts to archive and manage critical print serial collections in an informed and cost-effective manner. PAPR will feature a searchable database of information about current print archiving programs and holdings worldwide. http://www.crl.edu/archiving-preservation/print-archives/papr
Given the early connections in this subject between MIT, University of Chicago, and UCLA, perhaps a partnership focused on early meteorological literature could be explored.
NCAR
Open Sky is the repository for the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). http://opensky.library.ucar.edu/about/
While at this point Open Sky serves as an institutional repository for NCAR and UCAR, the Director of the NCAR Library, Mary Marlino, introduced a provocative presentation given by Salvatore Mele at the January 2011 Atmospheric Science Librarians International meeting. (http://www.aslionline.org/conference/2011program.html)
The discussion centered on the value of subject repositories, and what such a second generation physics repository, namely INSPIRE, seeks to provide. We asked: could or should there be an all-types-of-content- digital subject repository for atmospheric sciences? How might this be achieved if much of the hard-to-find-literature is still under copyright protection and not in public domain?
NOAA/NTIS/NWS
The NOAA Central Library offers this page: http://www.lib.noaa.gov/collections/imgdocmaps/index.html, however, the majority of collections here are not the documents in EAPS. One of their pages states, “The NOAA Central Library (NCL) has been a selective depository library for U.S. government publications distributed through the U.S. Federal Depository Library Program since 1993.” (NOAA) This status (selective) and the date (1993+) is a reason why they may lack some older publications. This list might be helpful but items might have to be searched individually: http://www.wrclib.noaa.gov/lib/collections/reference/noaa-pubs.html
The NTIS/GPO Document Access & Retrieval Test (DART) System makes “approximately 240,000 documents dating from 1964 to 2000 available free for viewing and provides the full text of these reports as free downloadable PDF files.” Possibly searching this source and/or the Catalog of US Government Publications http://catalog.gpo.gov/ (1976+) could lead to scanned documents. We would have to explore how to access this, since we’ve taken no action that I know of since a 2007 trial.
The National Weather Service (NWS) has some digitized material on its site.
NOAA Central Library “Government Documents” http://www.lib.noaa.gov/collections/gov/gov.html . Accessed May 31, 2011.