A Guide to the Geoscience Literature
An idiosyncratic guide from the Carleton College Geology Department and the Laurence
McKinley Gould Library at Carleton designed to help geoscientists and geoscience
students navigate through the literature.
New to Geoscience?
If you answer yes to any of the following questions, click here for some basic
references:
- I want to write a paper about geology for my writing seminar.
- My roommate is teasing me about cephalopods (or sphene, or orogenic) and
I want to find out what these words mean.
- I want to tease my roommate with another bizarre geologic word.
- I want to learn about the topography and geology of my home town.
- Are there mountains in the country where my Off Campus Study program is
located?
- What are the "hot topics" in geoscience?
And, by the way, what is geoscience?
What are the types of geoscience literature?
- Books and Monographs
- Maps
- Journal articles (scientific and non-technical)
- Government documents (federal, state, international, others)
- CD and web databases
- Field guides
- Conference reports and abstracts
- Carleton geology comps papers
- Other gray literature (what is gray literature?)
- Web pages
Why would you want to access the geoscience literature?
Who publishes geoscience literature?
- Commercial publishers
- Professional societies
- Government agencies
- Individual geoscientists
Finding the geoscience literature:
- In the Library of Congress cataloging system
- In the Government Documents (Superintendent of Documents classification)
- Through the U. S. Geological Survey
- Using MUSE, the Gould Library catalog, for geosciences
- Through electronic bibliographic databases
- Through abstract searches (what good is an abstract anyway?)
- Through full-text electronic journals
- Science
- Nature
- J-STOR
- Science Direct
- Through the web
- Electronic databases (LDEO, DLESE, DNR DataDeli)
- Through reference materials and librarians
- Through other libraries' collections
- Through geology faculty members
Becoming a "smart searcher"
Geoscience resources at the Laurence McKinley Gould
Library
- 2001-03 library configuration
- 2003 - library configuration
- How to guess if we have it at Carleton
- Minitex and ILL
Reading the geoscience literature
- Reading a paper in a geological journal
- Using cited reference lists from published articles and maps
- Reading a map
- Deciphering a URL
- Finding a classic paper using the Web of Science
- Citing sources from the geoscience literature in your own writing
- Using Endnote
© 2001-02 Mary Savina, Department of Geology, Carleton College
Charles Priore, Laurence McKinley Gould Library, Carleton College