Conference Reports

STS Databases Discussion Group

The theme for the meeting was, "Hidden Treasures of Reference: Exploring Free Reference Related Web Sites." Two facilitators led the discussion; Co-chair William Baer introduced them to the 35 people who attended.

John Hunter, Engineering Librarian at Rice University concentrated on sites relevant to the study and research in engineering and related disciplines. He introduced a number of access points to society publications, such as the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) and some government databases.

The second discussion leader was Fred Stoss from SUNY Buffalo who focused on sites relevant to the environmental sciences and offered examples from the range of information queries the sites could serve. In the spirit of celebrating the 30th anniversary of Earth Day in 2000, he shared a variety of different approaches to search databases and how to find them.

Julia Gelfand (jgelfand@uci.edu) and Suzanne Fedunok (suzanne.fedunok@nyu.edu) will serve as co-chairs for 1999-2000 and are interested in ideas for future discussion group topics and leaders.

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