Research Bibliography Data Re-used by Museum Departments

The Smithsonian Research Bibliography has collected citations for over 1600 Smithsonian-authored publications during the 2008 calendar year. Smithsonian Institution Library staff collect and edit this publication data which is of value to several audiences within the Institution including administration at different levels. For this reason it makes sense to re-use the information wherever possible to avoid a duplication of effort in collecting and editing the references. In recent months several museum departments in the Museum of Natural History have begun re-using this centrally-collected data to dynamically create publication lists for curator web pages. In addition, many of the citations listed on individual curator pages are hyper-linked to the corresponding full text of the publication if it is available in the Smithsonian Digital Repository.

To see an example this data re-use, look at the staff publication lists for NMNH curators, Storrs Olson or Mark Littler . The bottom portion of each page contains a list of recent publications which is updated in real-time as the master Research Bibliography is updated. It is hoped that in the near future other museums and research departments will also exploit the availability of this information to supplement their web content.