About This Project

Project Scope

The United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD) has a rich heritage since its founding in 1971. The UNCRD Bibliography and Index project has grown out of a relationship between the UNCRD and the University of Denver in which the University receives all available publications. The project seeks to provide analytical indexing of each work published including working papers, books, edited books, bibliographies, training materials, conference papers, and journal articles. A majority of UNCRD's publications are edited works containing chapters, articles, or papers. These smaller works would otherwise be hidden from scholars who need to consult them. When complete, an estimated 1,800 works will have been indexed.

Descriptor and Classification System

The descriptors or subjects used in the UNCRD Bibliography and Index are from the Marcothesaurus for Information Processing in the Field of Economic and Social Development, 5th edition. The Macrothesaurus, published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, was found to be perfectly suited for the UNCRD corpus. To date, over 20% of the 5,174 descriptors have been used in the project, with the need for only 20 locally established headings. It should be noted that the Macrothesaurus adopts British spelling conventions (ex.: LABOUR) and British terminology (TRANSPORT instead of TRANSPORTATION).

The Macrothesaurus groups descriptors into 19 major categories, sorted by a six-digit subject category code. This structure is noted at the top of each subject page as the following example shows:

ECONOMIC POLICY

02 ECONOMIC POLICY. SOCIAL POLICY. PLANNING
02.01 ECONOMIC POLICY. PLANNING
02.01.03 ECONOMIC POLICY

These works contain case studies and research reports on a wide variety of topics including Scope of Indexing In these cases, there is a record in the database for the series, which in turn contains links to individual publications within that series. The individual publications, in turn, are indexed down to the chapter level.

Web Site Elements

Home Page

The main "switchboard" page for initiating searches and browses of the index.

Citation Record (1.htm, 2.htm, etc.)

One record exists for each work, providing the fullest descriptive and subject analysis of the work. Hyperlinks within these records provide "backlinks" to other records related to the words in the hyperlink.

Author Alpha Index Pages (_sub/aA.htm, _sub/aB.htm, etc.)

Groups authors together alphabetically.

Subject Alpha Index Pages (_sub/saA.htm, _sub/saB.htm, etc.)

Groups subject descriptors together alphabetically. To see subjects grouped in a logical hierarchy, use the Browse by Classification feature.

Subject Pages (_sub/s1.htm, _sub/s2.htm, etc.)

One subject page exists for each of the over 1,100 subjects established so far.

Series Pages (_sub/RDD.htm, _sub/WP.htm, etc.)

A series page will be created for each of the UNCRD series, including Regional Development Dialogue, Regional Development Studies, UNCRD Working Papers Series, UNCRD Country Bibliography Series, etc.

Classification Pages (_sub/e01.htm, _sub/e02.htm, etc.)

One page for each of the 19 major classes of the Macrothesaurus. For subject descriptors in alphabetical order, use the Browse by Subject feature.

Keyword Search Page

Searches the full text of all text files in the root directory. This means is searches all bibliographic records. It does not search any of the index pages, since they are located in the _/sub subdirectory. The default Boolean operator is "OR". There is no way to force adjacency, so the best way to search is by using "AND".

Examples:

economic and development and thailand

historical and sites and india

hoshino and environment

regional and development and dialogue and africa

Record Layout

The following elements are included in the bibliographic citations:

Citation Includes all elements necessary to cite the work in a bibliography, or to locate the work in a library.
Title Full title of work being indexed. Titles include initial determiners (a, an, the), but sorting in title index lists ignores these initial words.
Year Year of publication. Not necessarily the same as year work was completed. For example, conference papers often were published in the year following their presentation.
Creator [Author, etc.] An iterating field showing the responsible parties.Most common is author, but also used are editor, guest editor, contributor, and participant. Names in these fields appear in alphabetical order, rather than order presented on the title page of the work. See citation field to find order of names presented on the title page. See below to see how names are established.
Material Type Type of work under consideration in record. Material types include: Book, Edited Book, Book Chapter, Journal Title, Journal Issue, Journal Article, Conference Proceedings, Conference Paper, and Series Title.
Features Physical features characterizing the work. Includes bibliographic references, notes, tables, figures (including maps), appendices and annexes. Choice of wording is generally the same as used in the work. This field is also used for the comments that follow main articles in Regional Development Dialogue.
Pages Denotes the extent of the work. Two formats are used: for individual physical volumes (Books, Edited Books, Journal Issues, Conference Proceedings), the format is 241 p. For parts of a larger work (Journal Articles, Conference Papers), the format p. 143-156 is used.
Related to

Since this project indexes both the whole and the parts of the whole, it is necessary to denote superordinate and subordinate relationships.

If a work contains subordinate works (chapters within an edited book, journal articles within a journal issue, conference papers within conference proceedings, etc.), these relationships are list under the subheading of Contents.

If a work is contained within a superordinate work, it is listed under the subheading Part of.
Subjects Alphabetical listing of Macrothesaurus subjects applied to this work. Following subject is Macrothesaurus classification number.
Abstract Abstract of work under consideration. Abstracts are being down as time permits. This field may also give outlines of tables of contents, if applicable.

Responsibility for this Project

Christopher C. Brown is responsible for creation of the Web pages and the database that underlies these Web pages. The entire Web site is generated automatically from an Access database. A series of extremely long reports are output from Access, and are then cut apart using NoteTab Plus. The result is static Web pages (as opposed to dynamic pages). This works quite will for a site that needs only intermitant updating and has no budget.

Dr. John F. Jones introduced the project to Chris Brown, and is himself responsible for much research through the UNCRD.

Josefa S. Edralin, James F. Goater, and the library staff at the UNCRD have been most helpful in providing access to documents and advice on the project. Mr. Yo Kimura, UNCRD Director, has been very encouraging of the project as well.