About the Aqua KE Aquaculture Documents Library
Why does this site exist, who runs it, and how is it funded?
How do I use this site, and what can I expect to find in it?
What is Aqua KE?
The Aquaculture Knowledge Environment, or Aqua KE, is an information and communication resource designed to help advance knowledge and information sharing surrounding the science, policy, and practice of aquaculture. This site, the aquaculture documents library, is the first phase of the Aqua KE program.
In the United States and around the world, aquaculture is governed by a seemingly endless array of agencies, departments, and institutions, which makes tracking down documents a grueling, time-consuming challenge. The library is designed to help researchers quickly find the information they need, by providing a searchable database of hundreds of documents from national governments and research consortia from around the world related to aquaculture. This site also provides access to articles from over 300 academic journals through its portal to Stanford University’s Highwire Press.
In the coming decades, aquaculture will play an increasingly prominent role in meeting global food needs. Yet this is a field in which the underlying science is still being developed, where policy is yet to be made, and where the potential for adverse environmental impacts is of increasing concern. A library and communications venue dedicated to aquaculture will help to streamline information gathering, provide access to quality data and analysis, and advance knowledge in the development of more environmentally sustainable aquaculture.
The Aquaculture Knowledge Environment is non-profit and non-commercial. The site is owned and administered by Island Press, a non-profit environmental publisher, and it is designed to help inform environmentally sustainable aquaculture practices and policies. Funds for the development and maintenance of the site have been generously provided by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Oak Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Surdna Foundation. Our partners include the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Stanford University Library System, which provides the database software and hosts the site.
How to Use the Aqua KE Aquaculture Library
There are two ways to access the documents in this library, and both methods are displayed prominently on the home page. Near the top of the page, you will see the following:
Browse the Library by Subject
Search the Library
If you are looking for something specific, such as documents on treatments for infectious salmon anemia, simply click on “search the library” and enter the appropriate search terms. If, on the other other hand, you aren’t entirely sure what you need and you would like to see the library’s contents laid out before you in a logical manner, click on “browse the library by subject.” There you can scroll through a list of aquaculture topics, and see at a glance how many documents we have on each of those topics.
Using either method of access, once you’ve chosen a document to investigate, you’ll have the option of downloading the entire document, or viewing its abstract. With very few exceptions, all of the documents in the library are in PDF format. PDF (which stands for portable document format) works on all computer platforms, and allows us to guarantee the authenticity of the document. If you are using Microsoft Windows, Linux, or Unix, you will need pdf reading software which is available from adobe.com. If you use an Apple Macintosh, you don’t need to download anything -- the operating system recognizes the file format automatically. The only drawback to using PDF to distribute documents is that the file size is generally large. For some of our longer, more graphics-intensive documents, file sizes can run into the tens of megabytes. While we recognize that this can be inconvenient to people accessing the library via modem, more compact versions of these files are not generally available.
Guide to Aqua KE Document Types
Because the Aqua KE library is composed of many different types of documents from a wide array of sources, providing researchers with useful mechanisms for sorting through the library’s contents is a constant challenge. When we first began loading documents into the library, our strategy was essentially to “do what the document told us to do.” So if a document had “technical memorandum” stamped on its title page for example, we dutifully classified it as such.
As the library has grown however, this method of document classification has become increasingly ponderous, and it may be becoming more confusing than helpful to researchers. In response to this problem, the Aqua KE has decided to restrict our document classification system to a few primary types. Effective 1 June, 2004, newly added documents will be classified as one of the following document types:
Report
-- A report is a document written by one person or organization for, or at the request of, another organization. For example, an organization’s annual financial statement to its board of directors is a report, and a senate committee report to the full senate is a report. Reports differ from other types of documents in that they are not primarily intended for the public, but for a specific group of people.
Case Study -- A case study is a document in which the author provides an in-depth examination and evaluation of a specific event, organization or circumstance.
Federal Register Notice -- A Federal Register Notice is any document published in the Federal Register of the United States federal government.
Legislation -- A legislation document is the actual text of any piece of legislation from any government, U.S. or otherwise. In certain rare circumstances, layman’s guides to legislation may be classified as legislation, if the guides are published and approved by the same body that published the legislation.
Journal Article -- A journal article is any document that has been previously published in a peer-reviewed journal. Newsletter articles, newspaper stories, and other types of media are excluded from this classification.
Information Sheet -- An information sheet is a short (usually one to two pages) introduction to the basics of a topic. Though information sheets can be logically classified as publications, their relative brevity and simplicity warrants a separate classification.
Conference Proceeding -- A conference proceeding is any document that reports the findings or discussions of a conference, workshop or symposium.
Publication -- A publication is any document that is intended for the public, and is not classifiable as another type of document. Most documents from government bodies such as the U.S. EPA or the New Zealand Ministry for the Environment will fall under this classification.
