LIAISON REPORT SLA SCI-TECH DIVISION
Web Address: http://units.sla.org/division/dst/
Discussion list information: http://units.sla.org/division/dst/listserv.html
Virginia Baldwin
January 3, 2007
Special Libraries Association Conference June 11-15, 2006
Report from the Science-Technology Division Board Meetings
The Science-Technology Division outgoing board meeting was held on Sunday June 11, 2006, and the incoming board meeting was held on June 14th. Major topics of interest were use of the STS survey, the Sci-Tech 2006 continuing education course, and vendor benefits.
STS Survey: The results of the 2004 Hot Topics Survey were used in 2006 conference planning. The topic, “Open Access Journals in the Sciences,” placed first in the survey and “Development of a Digital Institutional Repository” placed third. The latter topic was adopted for the continuing education course, “Establishing an Institutional Repository” on Sunday, June 11. Both topics were combined in the contributed papers session on Monday, “Open access & Institutional Repositories.”
Continuing Education course for 2006: Most of the attendees at the CE course were non-academic librarians. There was a discussion about the value of following a topic over several years.
Vendor Benefits: Copies of the map of the exhibit area, with vendors who sponsored Sci-Tech events highlighted in yellow, were distributed. Sponsors will be recognized at the Division’s Annual Business Meeting on Monday. Each will be given an opportunity for a brief update.
Science-Technology Division Annual Business Meeting
In addition to the sponsor recognition, attendees at this annual breakfast meeting were given an update of the conference and an opportunity to volunteer for committees. Awards were given and committee chairs were acknowledged. There was a call for vote on the new Governing Documents and there were some announcements.
Science-Technology Division Sponsored or Co-Sponsored Programs
In addition to the CE program and the Business Meeting and Breakfast, there were numerous opportunities for sci-tech librarians to network, communicate, learn, and develop. The Sci-Tech Division Newcomers Lunch had a different format for the first time. It was dubbed the Science division Newcomers Lunch and other participants were Physics, Astronomy, and Math (PAM), Chemistry (CHE), and Biomedical and Life Sciences (BIO) Divisions. New attendees were seated at roundtables for their organizations and a representative from each of the divisions spoke about their division to the entire body.
As is so often the case at conferences, there were time conflicts between many sessions. The sessions ran for three days from 7:30 am until late afternoon each day. On Monday evening there was an Open House with a program, “Sci-Fi, the Future, & Libraries.” The All Sciences & Engineering Reception was held on Tuesday evening at the Capital City Brewery, co-sponsored with the Chemistry and Engineering Divisions. On Tuesday there was an Annual Diversity Breakfast and on Wednesday there was a late afternoon Dutch Treat Sci-Tech & Engineering Happy Hour.
Probably the most fascinating and popular session was without conflict from other science/engineering related sessions on Wednesday morning: “The Science of Chocolate.” Samples of the topic were handed out at the door for all attendees and there were chocolate door prizes. There was a lesson in how to properly consume a piece of chocolate. Speakers for the event were Debra Miller, Senior Staff Nutritionist and Dave Stuart, Director, Nutrition and Natural Product Science, both from The Hershey Company. Some tidbits: only milk chocolate, not dark chocolate, has cholesterol, and cocoa works like aspirin in having an effect on reducing platelet aggregation. Speakers presented the results of scientific studies about chocolate and information about the fat composition of cocoa butter. They gave a mnemonic for remembering which DL is which, H(DL) – H is for Happy, the good kind, and L(DL), the L is for Lousy, the bad kind.
Two programs were annual updates/discussions, the Computer Science Roundtable and the Standards update. Several vendors and standards publishers talked about new features, foreign language translations, and the increasing prevalence of standards from foreign countries. Those mentioned were standards from Great Britain, Japan, and China.
Three papers comprised the Contributed Papers Session, “Open Access & Institutional Repositories.” Leila Fernandez, York University in Canada, presented an evaluation of Institutional Repositories and open access journals in India using information obtained through emails and personal interviews. Her paper included an analysis of many factors such as software selection, funding, submission policies, and subject coverage. Daureen Nesdill, University of Utah, used aspects of the Control Zone concept from the mid-1990’s publication of Cornell University’s Ross Atkinson to raise issues with today’s institutional repositories and open access journals. Among the access issues she raised were the inclusion of our IR content in our Online Catalogs and the ability of link resolvers, especially in proprietary databases, to link to IR content. The third paper, “Institutional Repositories: Beware the Field of Dreams Fallacy!” had three authors, all from the University of Southern California and covered the pre-establishment assessment experience of the USC Libraries as a model for the development of an institutional repository.
The contributed papers for the 2006 and earlier conferences are linked from the division Web site at: http://units.sla.org/division/dst/. Also available on the 2006 Web site is a related bibliography developed by a SLIS student from Indiana University.
Other co-sponsored programs covered a variety of topics:
· “Are Sci-Tech Libraries Ready for RFID”
· “Visualization Tools for Patents” (Vendor Update)
· “Bibliographic Instruction in Sci-Tech Libraries” (Academic Librarians Roundtable)
· “Working outside of the box: Science and Technology Academic and Corporate Librarians Interacting with Non-Traditional User Groups, Materials, Spaces, and Resources” (Poster Session)
· “Accessibility & Universal Design”
· “Stress Management: Laugh for the Health of It”
· “Is Federated Searching Good for Sci-Tech Libraries”
· “Knowledge Harvesting for Use in Planning”
· “Science & Engineering Resources 101” (Materials & Computer Science)
· “Understanding the Language of Early Warning Systems”
· “Open Access: The Value of Information”
SLA Annual Conference, June 2007, Denver, CO
The Science & Technology and Engineering Divisions’ Contributed Papers Session
The theme of the session is: “Responding to the New in Sci-Tech and Engineering Libraries.”
Submission invitation from Roger Beckman: “Change is a constant in libraries and information centers and all indications are for more and bigger changes in the future. We are looking for papers that explore how you are informing, instructing, managing, providing, evaluating, or creating the modern information environments for your users with change in mind. Consider how you take advantage of new situations and changes that are coming to provide change leadership in your organization. Theoretical and practical approaches are welcome.
“Possible questions include, but are not limited to:
Has collaboration between corporate executives and librarians been increasing? Are external forces a large factor in what is driving change in your library?
Are you working with faculty to incorporate more curriculum-based library instruction in your strategy?
Do you spend more time evaluating existing services and using that data to develop new services?
If fewer users are coming to our information centers or libraries to use traditional print resources how are we providing help in using the resources that they want?
Is your website the most useful tool in providing services to your users? Are the Googles and MySpaces of the world forcing us to develop services that are more intuitive and offer better results?
How are you going about increasing awareness and generating advocacy for the value of the library?”
Brainstorming for Continuing Education topics for SLA 2007
After the 2006 conference I participated with Sci-Tech Board members in an email discussion to develop a topic for a Sci-Tech Division Continuing Education course for the Denver conference. Results of the collaborative survey were used in this discussion. Specifically, these results were considered:
From the STS 2005 Continuing Ed Survey, these responses received an average score of 4.0 or higher from all recipients:
o Promoting science information literacy 4.16
o Collaboration between faculty and librarians 4.11
o Finding free high-quality on-line data 4.06
o Open access journals in the sciences 4.01
(http://www.ala.org/ala/acrlbucket/stscontinuinged/continuingedsurvey2005/preselected.htm#sla)
From the Continuing Ed Survey Open ended portion, New Technologies seemed to be of great interest:
o library applications of new technologies (blogs, RSS, podcasts, wikis, etc.)
o integrating new technologies into library instruction and services
o using new technologies to help researchers keep current
o using new technologies to communicate with the millennium generation
o case studies of interesting projects involving new technologies
o RSS: how to set up
o keeping up with technology developments
o technical methods for integrating library content into course management software or portals
(http://www.ala.org/ala/acrlbucket/stscontinuinged/continuingedsurvey2005/openended.htm)
Based on the responses of the board members, the consensus topics that were passed on to the CE course coordinator for 2007 were:
1. Finding/Managing free high quality scientific data online/on the web.
2. Integrating new technologies into science libraries/library instruction; using technology to help scientific researchers keep current.
The CE course that was developed nicely combines high interest topics from the STS Continuing Education Survey. It is described on the Sci-Tech Division Web site:
“Exploring New Technologies Through Instruction (Ticketed Event)
A survey of some of the best current uses of technology for instructional purposes. You'll look at how all these can be used to supplement or provide instruction in a library environment, including examples in the sciences and considering IM, social networking, RSS, blogs, wikis, online courseware, online tutorial creation, and games used for instruction. Includes discussion of the planning and evaluation necessary for effective use of technology in an instruction program. Attendees also explore emerging technologies and determine their individual realm of instructional possibilities”. http://units.sla.org/division/dst/Annual%20Conference/2007_Denver/conference.html#cecourse1
Descriptions for other sessions are also available at this site. One of these may be an attempt to rival “The Science of Chocolate.” It is titled “The Science of Beer.”
Sci-Tech Web Site
The Sci-Tech Web site has links to the STS Continuing Education Committee’s “Professional Continuing Education on the Web” and also to ASEE/ELD’s “Best Practices in Scholarly Publishing” under “Resources”. STS might consider posting the latter on the STS Web site, especially in light of our discussion at New Orleans.