Get Citation_Information for USGS publications

Rather than type separately all of the metadata elements that make up a citation, you may be able to get the Citation_Information from a bibligraphic database. For USGS publications, that database is the USGS Publications Warehouse. Here's how you can do this for USGS publications:

1. Find the identifier for the publication in the USGS Publications Warehouse. There are two ways to get this identifier:
  • Guess. The general form is serYYYYNNNN, where
    ser is an abbreviation of the publication series,
    YYYY is the two- or four-digit year of publication, and
    NNNN is the report number within the series, without leading zeros.
    Series abbreviations include
    ofrOpen-File Report
    b Bulletin
    pp Professional Paper
    ds Data Series
    sirScientific Investigations Report
    simScientific Investigations Map
    i I-map, various series names
    mf MF-map, various series names
    cirCircular
    fs Fact Sheet
    You can test your guess by typing this URL into your web browser, replacing (pwid) with your guess at the pub's correct identifier: https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/(pwid)
  • Search the publications warehouse to find the citation page of the publication you want. The identifier is the last part of that page's URL. For example, searching USGS Publications Warehouse for "Porphyry Copper deposits of the world" will yield a record for Open-File Report 2008-1155; in the upper right corner of the Publication Citation, there is a link labeled "Bookmark this citation"; it ends with the identifier ofr20081155.

    When you have the identifier, you can use Tkme to paste that information into your metadata in the appropriate place. The slide show below shows you the steps to do that:

2. Copy the identifier into the Citation_Information form and click Submit
3. Highlight the citation information in the form, press Ctrl-C or choose Copy from the Edit menu
4. Open Tkme and highlight a Citation element such as Source_Citation
5. Right-click to get a context menu and choose Paste
6. The citation information is inserted into the metadata