University of Tennessee library debuts “Database of the Smokies”

Posted on by Bill Rhodes

Ahead of summer 2013’s publication of “Terra Incongnita: An Annotated Bibliography of the Great Smoky Mountains, 1544-1934” by University of Tennessee Press, the UT Library has produced DOTS, Database of the Smokies.

DOTS contains searchable records of books, scholarly and popular journal articles, government and scientific reports, theses and dissertations, maps, and digitized photographs, as well as travel and recreational guides. With an initial 2,000 citations, focused within the fields of biology and ecology, and includes the research publications of distinguished former University of Tennessee botanists Aaron Sharp, Stanley Cain, and L. R. Hesler. In addition to important early studies of Smokies biology, DOTS contains citations to published material from the areas of history, psychology, genealogy, archaeology, economics, tourism, environmental studies, geology, literature, cultural studies, and park management. In the future, the curators of DOTS will add links to digitized photographs from the UT Libraries’ online collections and to other content freely available on the internet. As the content expands, DOTS should become a comprehensive resource for “all things Smokies.”

The project has been based on open-source platform Drupal, which will allow crowd-sourcing and users of DOTS to become contributors as well.

The Great Smoky Mountains Regional Project will continue to update the online database with new content. Together, Terra Incognita and the Database of the Smokies will be the most comprehensive bibliography of the Great Smoky Mountains ever compiled.

You can find DOTS at http://dots.lib.utk.edu/›

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