The Parker-Williams Library is a valuable resource

By Carol Armstrong, Librarian

On your next visit to Tall Timbers we invite you to check out the library. The Parker-Williams Library at Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy is a valuable resource for our staff scientists as well as the international fire community. The library answers many requests for materials or information, some from as far away as Italy. We subscribe to about 85 periodical subscriptions. The library is in the midst of several projects, including a map preservation project, and shifting the entire collection of books, periodicals and government documents, to make room where needed.

Parker-Williams Library reading room

We also add about 1,100 to over 1,350 bibliographic records, per year, to the E.V. Komarek Fire Ecology Database. The Fire Ecology Database is posted on the internet as a bibliographic resource for the international fire community. We collect articles, books, chapters of books, government documents, and conference proceedings on fire ecology, fire dependent species, and fire dependent ecosystems and their inhabitants, then add them to the Database, with keywords. We are not a document delivery service, but rather a bibliographic resource, in that we do not provide the articles, books, etc., but just the references so that patrons can request the materials at their local libraries. Partial funding for the Fire Ecology Database comes from a federal grant through the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP), the Fire Research and Management Exchange System (FRAMES), and the Southern Fire Exchange (SFE).

The library is open to the public by appointment only. Community members may use the materials in the library, but may not check them out. A copier is available to copy any materials needed. We participate in the OCLC interlibrary loan program, sharing our resources with other member libraries in this worldwide library cooperative.

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