Friday, June 30, 2017

Soil biology as a subject and it's informational structures and flows. Part I. 

During the early 1990's I happened to be present during the founding of a new academic field. A sequence of steps is usually involved -- Small meetings. Then meetings as a track at a larger academic organization's conference. Then small one-day mini-conferences. Then a journal for publishing results of studies done and of studies presented at the conferences. Then conferences of larger sizes. Then the full works -- award ceremonies, funding announcements; job announcements; web presence and so on.

So now when I look for the information structure and flows of a new area I'm interested in I look for those sorts of things. So I went looking for the equivalent for composting, or at least some near-equivalent. There were several dead ends to searches where the organizations I found were mostly set up to disburse information or sell various useful products.

The best I found, most relevant to what I was searching for seems to be the --

United States Composting Council (USCC).
   Mission Statement: http://compostingcouncil.org/mission/
   The official magazine is Biocycle: https://www.biocycle.net/ ..
   Biocycle Events Calendar: https://www.biocycle.net/conferences/event-calendar/
   The 2017 conference is in Portland Oregon starting October 16th, http://www.biocyclerefor.com/
   Previous conferences (scroll down). https://www.biocycle.net/conferences/about-biocycle-conferences/

Sampling the Tuesday presentations of the 2016 conferences:     http://www.biocyclerefor.com/2016/tuesday.html
 
   It turns out you can download the pdfs for the talks apparently but when you try to open the pdfs on your computer you can't access them without a password. I tried searching unsuccessfully for a couple of names to see if they'd posted previews of their talks elsewhere on the internet. In some fields that happens a lot but probably not so much here.

So I searched World Cat for Biocycle.
   https://www.worldcat.org/title/biocycle/oclc/494598926&referer=brief_results
   .. Which indicates it is accessible at most of the academic libraries nearby: UNM, UNM HSLIC, CNM, and some others further from where I live.

   I used to go to the New Mexico Health Sciences Library and Information Center on Sundays because it is usually open from noon until late and the parking is free. Ideally one of the places has actual physical copies of Biocycle and the conference proceedings books as I do so much more enjoy browsing through those.

Richard Harper aka harpersnotes

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