2012 Best Practices for Government Libraries

Bibliography Boon: A Knowledge Initiative
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BEST PRACTICES 2012
By Leanna E. Bush, Library Technician, US Army Medical Research Institute of
Chemical Defense, Wood Technical Library, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD
I’m updating my CV but don’t remember all of my publications. How do I get
that information? I have a new student and would like him or her to read my
articles from the last couple of year. Where do I find copies?
If you work in a research library, you too have probably been asked similar
questions from patrons overwhelmed by the prospect of having to obtain their
career publications. Federal research libraries also have the unique requirement of
depositing publications with the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). In
an effort to address these two issues, library staff at the Wood Technical Library
launched a comprehensive bibliographic project that, to date, contains over 3,900
citations.
The process of creating the bibliography was simple but time consuming.
Fortunately, our editorial staff had already compiled a record of journal articles and
technical reports, so that was our starting point. Library staff performed exhaustive
searches in a variety of databases (e.g., PubMed, Web of Knowledge, etc.) to
augment this list. As items were identified, staff manually added each citation to
EndNote® bibliographic management software. The flexibility of this product
permitted a wide array of documents to be cataloged by type and enabled quick
retrieval of similar items. Basic templates were customized to display selected
information about each citation so that any end user could quickly retrieve and
display the pertinent information for his or her publications. The “Cite While You
Write” feature for Microsoft Word also made it very easy to cite references, figures,
and tables in the proper format.
With EndNote®, library staff had the capability to add a wealth of information to a
citation. DTIC accession numbers were incorporated into records so that deposited
items were readily identified. Abstracts and keywords were also included in each
record so that searches were more accurate. With the inclusion of this information,
there was no longer the need to know the exact title or author since free text key
word searching was an option. For those articles deposited in DTIC or made freely
available by publishers, the URL was also added to the citation record.
Using the share feature in EndNote®, all library patrons may download and use the
historical bibliography. Patrons may reformat the bibliography by customizing
templates so that it becomes a CV on the spot. Since the bibliography will be
updated and automatically formatted, patrons no longer have to waste valuable
time with the upkeep of their own publications. Library staff also save tedious
hours in searching various databases to respond to requests for in-house
publication information.