On line to the Pacific

The Micronesian Area Re search Centre at the University of Guam is expanding its service to the Pacific with in creased capacities for informa tion retrieval and materials acquisition. This increase is the continuation of growth and de velopment of the centre over the past several years.

In late 1982, a Micronesian Area Tropical Agricultural Data base was established as a co operative project of the Univer sity of Guam’s College of Agri culture and Life Sciences and the Robert F. Kennedy Mem orial Lebrary, and was funded under a grant from the United States Department of Agricul ture.

The major objective of the project was to gather in one location all published and un published documents produced in or about Micronesia concer ning tropical agriculture and related subjects, and to provide bibliographic information retrie val and document dissemina tion services.

The Micronesian Area Re search Centre (MARC) assumed responsibility for the database in 1985 and for the ultimate expansion of the model into a topically compre hensive access tool for the region and for users beyond as well.

“This will eventually be accessable on an international scale”, said Dr. Kenneth Car riveau. “And MARC will be better able to monitor its own usage with this system in place. ”

Interest in the Micronesian region and publications about it have increased exponentially over the past decade. However, access to this information has been restricted because of the nature of the tools themselves; published bibliographies and other databases generally are either topical in scope or limited to a specific geographic region; scholars and students have not

had access to a single, inter disciplinary and comprehensive reference tool to facilitate their studies.

In April 1986 the centre began to receive what has become 900 linear feet of docu ments related to the political, economic, and social changes on Guam. A three year project has begun which will identify, index, and microfilm the papers of Guam’s retired delegate to the US Congress, A.B. Won Pat. It is envisioned that the materials will be available for on-site use early in 1988.

MARC has long been recog nised as one of the area’s great locations of source materials on the Micronesian and Pacific re gion. Its collections consist of approximately 30,000 cata logued volumes, 200 current periodical titles, 20,000 photo graphs, 50,000 negatives, 1.000 slides, 200 sound recor dings, 50 video recordings, 3.000 maps, 400 linear feet of Spanish manuscripts, 100 linear feet of personal papers, 1700 microform units, and 75 drawers of vertical files materials.

MARC’s goal is to acquire, organise, and make available for use, everything that has been published about the re gion. The acquisitions budget for the centre is currently $17,500. However, a substan tial number of documents are acquired each year through gifts and exchanges.

In 1985-86 approximately 8,800 patrons used the collec tions, and they came from all over the world, as well as from around the Pacific.

Today MARC has a new and expanded responsibility in the western Pacific, and indeed, in the entire Pacific as the new Micronesian states in the region attain complete autonomy.

The research service needs of the region have increased and continue to do so. More stu dents from the region are enrol

led at the University of Guam and they become accustomed to using the centre’s facilities.

The various new political lead ers and government officials look to MARC to supply its needs for both historical and contemporary information and statistics.

MARC has one of the most complete map collections in the entire region. There are many still to be catalogued, and many more which are acquired reg ularly. The MARC geographer, Dr. Bruce Karolle, is presently working on a regional atlas.

“This will provide a basic island and place name coverage of Micronesia”, he said when he received a $5,000 grant for a preliminary publication.

Albert Williams and Kenneth Carriveau are the librarians and

they are both together with their staffs swamped with work and requests for informa tion. The new changes in politi cal status in the region have made for an increased volume of queries from all parts of the world.

In addition, the increased numbers of island students now studying their own history and culture in a more formalised way, have added to te work loads.

A good deal of the con temporary journals and periodi cals arc received on exchange.

In this way the centre works closely with the other institu tions in the region on a co operating basis in the exchange of information.

Dirk Anthony Ballendorf