Abstract:

This Manual provides an overview of the ASFISIS release-3 software which the ASFA Partners use to prepare bibliographic references, in machine readable format, for inclusion in the ASFA bibliographic database. The Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA) Bibliographic Database contains more than 500,000 bibliographic references (or records) to the world's aquatic science literature accessioned since 1971. ASFA is produced as a co-operative effort by the United Nations Co-sponsoring Partners, the National and International Partners, and the Publishing Partner. The objective is to disseminate bibliographic information on the science, technology and management of the marine and freshwater environments to the world community. All ASFA Partners are represented on the ASFA Advisory Board, for which FAO provides the Secretariat. Input to the ASFA Database (i.e. the bibliographic references) is prepared by the network of ASFA Partners who are together responsible for the monitoring of more than 5,000 serial publications as well as books, reports, conference proceedings, and grey literature. The collective input is sent to the Publisher of ASFA (CSA), in machine readable format, where it is processed by computer and merged to create a master file (the ASFA Bibliographic Database). From the master file, the ASFA Information Products are produced. They are distributed to (or made available to) the ASFA Partners on a monthly/quarterly basis in the form of printed abstracts journals (e.g. ASFA-1, ASFA-2, ASFA-3 etc.), Internet databases, CD-ROM, and Magnetic tapes for use as a source of data in local, national or regional information services. The Bibliographic Reference describing each document in the ASFA database contains: a detailed bibliographic citation, an abstract, and a set of indexing terms. During the preparation of the bibliographic reference, it is the responsibility of the ASFA Partners: to identify the data elements making up the bibliographic citation, to write/edit the abstract, and to choose the indexing terms. To assist the ASFA Partners in the preparation of input (that is to ensure the consistency necessary for the computer processing and the uniformity within the resulting ASFA information products) standardized cataloguing, abstracting and indexing procedures have been prepared and published under the title of the ASFIS Reference Series.