The Sussex Harvard Information Bank (SHIB)

Through its
co-directors, HSP has been continuously engaged in CBW-policy research
since the 1960s. The documentation and other materials accumulated
in the course of this work now constitute a major research resource
not only for HSP but also for others outside HSP, and for the future.
So HSP has built the collection into a organised and accessible
archive to which it allows supervised access. This is known as SHIB,
for Sussex Harvard Information Bank, and is open to anyone who can
demonstrate a worthwhile need for access to what it contains. To
enhance access, searchable electronic data-bases are used to register
certain categories of information entering SHIB. Web interfaces
are currently being developed for two of these data-bases in order
to enable access to them via the HSP website.
SHIB is a living
archive in the sense that its structure is always being developed
so as to suit the changing requirements of researchers in the field.
And its holdings are continually growing, under several influences:
- Deposit of
private papers
- Release
of state papers, some of which are copied into SHIB by HSP researchers
or associates
- Completion
of new research projects
- Systematic
monitoring and scanning of new sources by HSP researchers, associates
or correspondents.
SHIB is chiefly
held at Sussex where it now occupies nine bays of archive stacks
and other space at the Freeman Centre, about 230 metres of shelving
in all. Some specialized parts of the collection are held at Harvard,
mostly with copies at Sussex. Literature-monitoring efforts of several
types keep SHIB up to date, and a network of correspondents and
collaborating literature-scanners worldwide ensures that the monitoring
is broad in its international coverage. SHIB holdings, which by
now must number many hundreds of thousands of items, are organized
so that people outside HSP, as well as those within it, can gain
access to the information contained in SHIB. Development, aimed
particularly at improving remote access, is in progress.
The fundamental
purpose of SHIB is to facilitate and empower policy-orientated research
in the field of CBW disarmament, antiproliferation and associated
international regime formation and implementation; research which
in the past has suffered from the poor quality of available information.
This objective directs the emphases in SHIB's holdings and in the
way in which the holdings are organized. Thus, there is a particular
emphasis on acquisition of uptodate political information, a current-awareness
function which supports the News Chronology section of the HSP quarterly
journal, The CBW Convention Bulletin. Scientific, technical,
military and historical information also enters SHIB. The holdings
are organized into a fine-grained storage system organized by date
and/or by subject and also, in particular cases, by author or originating
agency. This enables browsing by visiting researchers. In some areas
of SHIB more active methods of processing incoming information are
also applied, through the use of registers and computerized data-bases.
Within the SHIB
storage system, there are some 3000 separate storage locations,
each one with a different alphanumerical label. These labels, which
serve as locators for each item of stored documentation and are
inscribed on each such item, also serve as subject-matter descriptors
in the computerized records of stored documentation-items. A single
item of stored documentation may bear more than one such descriptor,
though in hard-copy form it will generally be stored in only one
location; duplicates, or copies of its title page, may be held in
other possible locations. Subject-matter searching is thus made
relatively easy.
Associated
data-bases

Three searchable
computerized data-bases are being developed and maintained so as
to increase the utility of SHIB. The most advanced is the CBW
Events Data-Base, which is a systematic record of events back
to 1987 in and around the world of CBW. It is from this data-base
that the 'News Chronology' section of each issue of The CBW Conventions
Bulletin is excerpted. Each record in the data base -- one record
per event or cluster of associated events, currently about 15,000
in all -- is fully referenced with citations of SHIB-held documentation.
The records are held in a powerful text-oriented data management
programme that enables different types of search to be run through
the records. The data-base is continually updated, corrected as
necessary, and added to retrospectively as new documentation comes
in. It is being extended backwards in time (to 1945) as well as
forwards.
The second database
is a continually updated register of substantial new publications
in the field since 1987. It is called the CBW Publications Data-Base.
Its records, of which there are now some 4,500, are held in EndNote,
so as to facilitate searching and manipulation.
Every three
months, the latest additions to the Events and Publications data-bases,
including prior records that have been introduced, revised or expanded
from late-received information or that were for some reason excluded
from the Bulletin, are published in hard-copy form as the HSP CBW
Chronicle, which is distributed to a small number of specialist
libraries and HSP collaborators.
The third data-base,
still at an early stage of construction, is the CBW Archives
Data-Base. SHIB has substantial holdings of photocopies of British,
American and other state papers addressing CBW matters, mostly copied
by HSP or collaborating researchers from national archives or, in
the case of some of the American ones, obtained under the Freedom
of Information Act or from personal papers. The research value of
such documentation is very much dependent upon its indexing; the
bibliographical records initially used in SHIB for this purpose
were manual ones on index cards. These records, which are necessarily
far more detailed than those of the CBW Publications Data-Base,
are now being replaced by computerized records. As this proceeds,
the data-base is becoming an increasingly powerful tool for further
archival and other research.
Access to
SHIB
By prior arrangement
with the HSP Sussex Administrator (click here),
visiting scholars and researchers may consult SHIB and its associated
databases. For people who have not yet visited, the account given
in SHIB Coarse Structure
of how hard-copy (as opposed to electronic) material is stored in
SHIB may be useful.
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