GeoRef (1785- )

Database Description
Fields in This Database:
· Authors and Organizations
· Titles and Publishing Information
· Subjects
· Abstract
· Issue Numbering
· Codes

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Database Description: The GeoRef database, established by the American Geological Institute in 1966, provides access to the geoscience literature of the world. The database contains references to geoscience journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports and theses. Journal list.

The GeoRef database covers the geology of North America published from 1785 to the present, and the geology of the rest of the world published from 1933 to the present. The database includes references to all publications of the U.S. Geological Survey. Masters' theses and doctoral dissertations from U.S. and Canadian universities are also covered.

To maintain the database, GeoRef editor/indexers regularly scan more than 3,500 journals in 40 languages as well as new books, maps, and reports. They record the bibliographic data for each document and assign index terms to describe it. Each month between 4,000 and 7,000 new references are added to the database.

PRODUCED BY: American Geological Institute.
DATES COVERED: From 1785.
UPDATES: Monthly.

Fields in This Database

AUTHORS AND ORGANIZATIONS

AUTHORS (.AU.) encompasses:

• Main or primary author of the article or book (AUTH).
• Alternate, secondary or joint author of the article or book (ALAU).
• Organization (association, institution, conference, corporation, or government agency) that produced the book or journal (CO).

All words are indexed. If you are unsure how the name is given, begin searching by surname only. For hyphenated surnames, use either surname or both.

HOST ITEM AUTHOR (.HOA.): Name of editor or compiler of book or proceedings in which the article appeared.

TITLES AND PUBLISHING INFORMATION

ARTICLE OR BOOK TITLE (.TI.): Title of the article, entire book, or entire journal being cited.

JOURNAL OR SOURCE TITLE (.JN.): Title of the journal, book, or proceedings in which the cited article appears.

PUBLISHER (.BKPB.): For entire books or journals, BKPB contains the name of the publisher.

HOST ITEM PUBLISHER (.HOIM.): For articles published within journals, books, or proceedings, HOIM contains place, publisher, and date for the host item (journal, book, or proceedings).

ALTERNATE TITLE (.ALTI.): Alternate title, such as a journal special issue title.

SERIES (.SE.): If the book is published as part of a series, SE contains the name of the series.

TRANSLATED TITLE (.TT.): For documents published in languages other than English, TT provides the title in English.

SUBJECTS

SUBJECTS (.SU.): SU encompasses all kinds of subjects:

• Names of places discussed in the article or book (from the GeoRef Thesaurus).
• Topical description of the content of the article or book (from the GeoRef Thesaurus).
• Names of people or organizations discussed in the article or book.

With the SU qualifier, you may search all kinds of subject keywords or subject phrases. The thesaurus finds place names and topical descriptors only.

SUBJECT THESAURUS (.SUT.): This field is defined for system use when retrieving subjects through the thesaurus. People are unlikely to use this field for searching.

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT (.AB.): Omit stopwords when searching AB.

ISSUE NUMBERING

YEAR (.YR.): Year of publication of the article or book.

VOLUME (.VO.): Volume of the journal in which the article appeared.

NUMBER (.NO.): Number of the issue in which the article appeared.

PAGINATION (.PG.): If you remember the starting page of an article but not the full citation, searching with PG might be useful. Enter the starting page and the truncation symbol $.

CODES

GEOREF ACCESSION NUMBER (.AN.): Record control number assigned by database producer; unique to each record in the database. Searching by AN is a method for returning directly to a record that you have retrieved previously.

PUBLICATION TYPE (.AT.): Type of document. The interface for this database provides a pull-down Publication Type menu, for quick limiting of a search.

Analytics (articles in journals, books, or proceedings)
Monographs (entire books)
Serials (entire journals)

CLASSIFICATION CODE (.CC.) and DESCRIPTION (.CCD.): Subject category codes and phrases from the American Geological Institute list of GeoRef Subjects Covered. Use CC to search the code; use CCD to search the description. Note that searching by code is more precise, because the same word may occur in multiple descriptions.

COORDINATES (.COOR.): Each coordinate is eight characters in length and consists of the hemisphere, degrees, minutes, and seconds recorded in the pattern HDDDMMSS. In each subelement, an unused position contains a zero. All four coordinates can be searched using COOR. In addition, you may search specific coordinates as follows:

.WCOO. - Westernmost longitude (W1244500.wcoo.)
.ECOO. - Easternmost longitude (W1165500.ecoo.)
.NCOO. - Northernmost latitude (N490000.ncoo.)
.SCOO. - Southernmost latitude (N445000.scoo.)

COUNTRY OF PUBLICATION (.CP.): A 2- or 3-character code representing the place of publication of the journal or book. For a complete list of codes, see USMARC Country Codes at the Library of Congress. Examples:

cau -- California
dcu -- District of Columbia
ohu -- Ohio
vau -- Virginia
etc.

at -- Australia
fr -- France
gw -- Germany
ja -- Japan
ne -- Netherlands
ru -- Russia (Federation)
sp -- Spain
ur -- former Soviet Union
xxc -- Canada
xxk -- Great Britain
xxu -- United States

ISSN (.IS.): The International Standard Serial Number of the journal.

ISBN (.ISBN.): The International Standard Book Number of the book.

LANGUAGE (.LA.): A 3-character code representing the language of the article or book. For a complete list of codes, see USMARC Language Codes at the Library of Congress. Examples:

eng -- English
chi -- Chinese
fre -- French
ger -- German
jpn -- Japanese
rus -- Russian
spa -- Spanish

April 2003

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