Joined MyMetro Today

For many years through my Science Librarians SIG, I have been active in METRO, the Metropolitan New York Library Council. It is New York’s leading provider of training and support for library and information professionals at every stage of their careers. Its individual membership program, myMETRO, connects individual librarians, archivists, information professionals, students, and retirees to an array of unique networking opportunities, dynamic learning resources, and other valuable benefits. Thus I will be able to take continuing education courses at a discounted rate. With a poor budget, it is unlikely that NJIT will be able to fund my going to national meetings. Most of the cost of these meetings is for hotel and other living and travel expenses. Since I will be footing the bill, I would rather my person funds pay for the professional development not travel. Sometimes we have to make some difficult choices.

Information Literacy for the Environmental Policy Area

Last week I met with Professors Nancy Jackson and Zeyuan Qiu to discuss information literacy training in the environmental policy area. This area may be tricky since it is so multidisciplinary. I would not give a lecture to the class, but develop a Powerpint presentation that moves the students from the Research Roadmaps to resources specific to this area. After consulting with the faculty later in the summer, I would do a presentation with Camtasia to demonstrate some searches.

My Suggestion to NJIT Users of Scifinder Scholar

I reported in this journal that since many users of Scifinder Scholar here prefer the client based version, I have split my two seats between the two versions. I examine the statistics sent every month by Chemical Abstracts Service and noticed that several users of the web version keep trying to access the database several times when the "seat" is being used. The statistics also show that there are more turnaways for the web version. I sent an e-mail to NJIT users of Scifinder suggesting they download the client even if the web version is their preference.

Editing the Copy for the Chemical Information Bulletin

I think I have written in this blog that I am active in the American Chemical Society Division of Chemical Information. I am the Assistant Editor of the Chemical Information Bulletin which is published about a month before the Society's national meeting. I am editing the copy before we submit it to the printer. In the future, the Chemical Information Bulletin will be available only in electronic format.

Back to Work - 400 Emails waiting for me

Even though I took my laptop on vacation, I resolved not to look at my work e-mail. I came back and found over 400 e-mails. It takes time to look through them to find out that 90% are not important.

On Vacation until June 22

I will be on vacation from NJIT until Monday June 22. I will take a short trip with the family to Springfield, Massachusetts to see the Basketball Hall of Fame and other attractions in the area. There will be no new posts in this blog until then.

METRO Science Librarians SIG Meeting Today

I announced the topic for today a roundtable discussion on information literacy. Besides me there were 5 particpants:

• Kris Fitzpatrick - IEEE
• Allan Barnett - Institute of Physics Publishing
• Steve Chudnick - Brookdale Community College
• Dorothea Coiffe - Borough of Manhattan Community College
• Erica Sauer - Student at Rutgers University

We talked about how important that information literacy skills were once students graduated and had jobs in industry. They must be able to evaluate information to make proper business decisions. We also discussed how important formation literacy skills when students or professionals search several databases simultaneously (federated searching).

The conversation did meander away from information literacy but in a positive way. Kris announced that IEEE will be releasing a new search interface in January which will emulate Google. I commented about Google "If you can't beat them, join them." Since students seem so comfortable with the #1 search engine, publishers are trying to emulate them. The new interface will allow for faceted searching.

I was disappointed in the turnout. In all the years that I have run this group, this meeting had the lowest turnout. Perhaps June is a bad time to have a meeting. Maybe people did not want to come out on a damp dreary day. A comment was made the quality rather than the quantity was more important. I will reconvene the group in the Fall.

Should I go to the American Chemical Society Meeting in Washington in August?

For most recent years I have attended the American Chemical Society National Meeting usually held in August. This year it is being held in Washington, but I have doubts on whether I should go. With car expenses, hotel, and meeting registration it is an expensive proposition. In the past NJIT has paid for at least part of it, but the budget will be very tight and I may have to foot the bill for everything. Since hotels in the city are so expensive, I usually stay at a hotel in Rockville, Maryland and take the METRO to the meeting. If I don't go to that meeting, I will likely go to several one day meetings in Manhattan throughout the year. I have time to think about this.

My Comment about adding arts and humanities to Scopus

I sent this to the Science Librarians Listserv (sts-l@ala.org)

Scopus has recently announced that it has almost doubled its coverage in the arts and humanities by adding 1450 titles to make a total of about 3500 journals going back to 2002. For several years now, I have used Scopus to do searches in a wide range of areas within the scientific, medical and engineering disciplines. I am quite satisfied with the search interface, journal coverage, and special features of the database. It has been popular with library users at NJIT since we first introduced it.

I question the advisability of integrating the arts and humanities into the same database with the sciences. Scopus gives the user the option of limiting a search to life sciences, physical sciences, health sciences, and social sciences. There is no option to limit to arts and the humanities. According to their announcement the coverage in the arts and humanities only goes back to 2002. A user searching a topic in the arts and humanities may not realize that and miss significant relevant information by limiting the search to Scopus.

My suggestion to Elsevier is to set up a separate database for the Arts and Humanities as is done with the Web of Science.

Visitor from H.W. Wilson

Today a saleswomen from H.W. Wilson, a publisher of library databases, came to the NJIT Library to discuss Wilson Omnifile Full Text Select Edition. We have had the Omnifile Mega edition, but may have to scale down our database collection. The Select version includes only records with the full-text of the article. An interesting feature is the ability to hear an audio version of the html version of the full article. The user can also download it as a podcast for future reference. The full-text can also be translated into other languages.

Fridays off all summer

For several years now NJIT has been closed on Fridays during the summer. Since there are no classes scheduled on Fridays, the administration felt that it could save on energy costs by closing Fridays. They claim that $200,000/year is saved. A few faculty and graduate students complained that research productivity is reduced on a 4 day week. They are in the minority since most people enjoy three day weekends. It's too bad that it is raining today.

Report from Library Camp at Brooklyn College yesterday

This was the first professional meeting that I've attended since March. I had attended a smiliar library camp at Baruch College in August 2007. Talks at professional meetings are usually prepared in advance. At a "camp" the meeting is announced on a Wiki where people can suggest topics. At the first session of the camp the events with their moderators are arranged. Like any meeting, it is impossible to attend every session.

I suggested the topic "How Should We Handle the Dinosaur Known as the Reference Desk". I was concerned about the dropping off of face to face transactions at the reference desk. The participants suggested that librarians roam to see if people needed assistance. People reported that many library patrons would rather communicate electronically. A summary of this session compiled by Myron, a student at the Queens College Library School may be found at:

http://libcampnyc.pbworks.com/Reference-Desk-as-Dinosaur

My second session was Social Media Marketing moderated by Ellyssa Kroski. She discussed many Web 2.0 services that could be used in libraries. Some of the resources she discussed were:

• Twitterfeed
• Sitemeter
• Widgetbox
• Ping.fm
• Protopage

After lunch Stephen Francoeur moderated a session titled the Future of Digital Reference Services . People talked about their experiences with various chat reference services. Stephen also demonstrated the service Etherpad , the only web-based word processor that allows people to work together in really real-time.

My last session was titled Publicizing collections using 2-0 and Twitter 101. Susan Chute talked about the use of Voicethread and blogging at the New York Public Library. Valerie Forrestal gave a primer in the uses of Twitter. I am wondering if it is just a fad or is it here to stay. It seems to be a real consumer of time.

Many of the Web 2.0 resources that were discussed at the meeting seem redundant. It was worthwhile to go to learn about what other libraries are doing.

I met Susan Gormley who worked with me at the Science and Technology Division of NYPL over 20 years ago.

Now I will go back to the Wiki and read about other sessions.

Twitter Account for the NJIT Library Reference

Since Twitter seems to be the "big thing" these days, I set up NJITRef as the Twitter account for NJIT Library Reference. Only time will tell if Twitter is a fad or if it is here to stay. Below is a reference to a good article on the library usage of Twitter.

Milstein, S. (2009, March). Twitter FOR Libraries (and Librarians). Online, 33(2), 34-35. Retrieved June 2, 2009, from Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts database

Scifinder Scholar Statistics for the Past 7 weeks

In the middle of April I polled users of Scifinder Scholar to ascertain their preference for web or client version. The results indicated a slight preference for the client version. At that point in time only 17 of the 80 registered users voted. Now I have 148 users who registered for passwords of the web version. At that point I reallocated my 2 seats: 1 for the web and 1 for the client version. The usage statistics since that time indicated that 64.5% of the attempts were for the web version while 35.5% were for the client version. The turnaway rate for the web version was 25.6% while the rate for the client was much lower at 19.7%.

Go figure - they say that prerfer the client version, but more peopleuse the web.