Report from the Upstate Downstate New York Science Librarians Meeting of April 26

I took notes at the meeting on Monday. If anyone wants the Powerpoint Presentations, please e-mail me at Bruce.Slutsky@adm.njit.edu . I would like to thank Jason Kucsma and Tom Neilsen of METRO and Heidi Webb of Syracuse University with helping me plan this meeting.

The Joint Upstate Downstate New York Science Librarians meeting was held April 26, 2010 at METRO headquarters in Manhattan. The theme of the meeting was Trends in Sci-Tech Publishing. The upstate librarians attended via web conferencing.

The first speaker was Elizabeth Perill of Elsevier. She discussed:

Quick historic introduction of Elsevier
STM publishing – an overview
Publishing cycle and key Investments
Innovation
How Investments & Innovations result in meeting the key needs

Some of the points she made were:

• 26% of journal articles published globally are from Elsevier
• Elsevier has 9 million article published with 300,000 added every year
• It publishes 18 new journals each year
• The electronic submission of journals is twice as fast as before
• Some new innovations include:
o Inline Multimedia Playback
o The first generation of smart applications to enhance discoverability

She mentioned SciVal Spotlight which provides a complete picture of an institution’s research strength and SciVal funding which allows universities to better compete for funding and increase grant income.

She cited statistics saying that:

• There has been significant increases in research productivity since 1999
• Elsevier continues to provide improvement in values for money
• There has been dramatic increases in access levels since 1999

The positive trajectory in STM publishing since the E-Revolution began in 1999 should continue.

Elsevier publications have been archived in the Royal Library of the Netherlands, Portico, and Clockss.

She concluded by saying:

“Innovation is in our DNA and has resulted in new ways to present content, to find or deliver content”

The second speaker was Allan Barnett of the Institute of Physics Publishing. He stated:


IOP Currently publish 65 journals, over half with partnerships of other learned society publishers



It provides 14,000 peer reviewed articles per annum; Includes Turpion and AAS.

In 2009, over 15% of our journals with Impact Factor over 5, and 20% over 3.

Majority of our titles, offer free access to all new content for 30 days from online publication.

Physicsweb.org and Nanotechweb.org are two specialist portals that it provides.

Some of its innovations were being:


First STM publisher to provide all its content online; now with comprehensive journal archive;

First STM publisher to provide z39.50 compliance;

First STM publisher to offer forward citing;

It has 350,000 articles and over 550,000 preprint articles.

Performance Indicators 1995-2009

• Online full-text downloads, in excess of 8 million;


• Journals published grown x 2 times industry rate;


• Papers published grown at x 6 times industry rate;


• Citation performance grown at x 3 times industry rate;


• 25% increase in impact factor since 2000.

The third speaker was Kristen Fitzpatrick, the IEEE University Partnership Program Manager. Her talk was based on content, context and community.

Content:

She explained that IEEE publications covered all areas of technology including aerospace, information technology, semiconductors, circuits, biomedical engineering, computing, and wireless broadband. The society is publishing 5 new journals this year.

The collaborative content of IEEE Explore includes:

• IET Journals, Conferences and seminar digest
• More than 250,000 AIP/AVS documents from 5 top applied physics publications
• IBM Journal of Research and Development
• 400 + Wiley/IEEE books

She mentioned web sites including:

IEEE Smart Grid

Emerging Technologies Portal

IEEE TV

http://Tryengineering.org

Context

The new interface for IEEExplore was discussed. A useful feature is suggested search terms suggested by the user community.

IEEE has entered the realm of mobile computing which did not need to be a clone of the full site. They developed new imaginative apps around their core offerings.

The mobile services are available at http://m.ieeexplore.ieee.org

A question and answer period followed. The three publishers were sensitive to the budgetary problems of their customers. They were all willing to hear suggestions.

Memorial Service for William Spillers at NJIT on Wednesday May 5

I am posting an announcement made by Interim Provost Donald Sebastian

There will be a memorial service for Dr. William Spillers on Wednesday, May 5, 2010 from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Ballroom B, following the NJIT faculty meeting. The Spillers family has requested that donations in Bill’s memory be made to the Breast Cancer Network of Strength charity (http://www.networkofstrength.org/information).

Learning the Advanced Features of a Database

We all have our comfort zones as we search databases. We are familiar with the basic commands and operations, but are reluctant to explore more advanced features. I have used Science Direct at the NJIT library for many years. Today I met with the Product Manager and Human Factors Engineer from Elsevier to discuss new enhancements for Science Direct.

I explained that I rarely used that database for subject searching. If the Serials Solutions Database provided by the NJIT Library says that we have an Elsevier journal, it will direct the user to the exact article within Science Direct. I pointed out that I use Scopus for subject searching. There is a link within the Scopus bibliographic record that points the user to the full-text which would be in Science Direct if the journal is published by Elsevier.

Today, I was able to familiarize myself with these special features of Science Direct:

• Download Manager – one may download more than one PDF at a time and specifying the naming convention of the file.


• Related articles of the one retrieved.


• Features of the HTML format of articles
  --Ability to extract the figures and tables and display them externally
  --Extraction of relevant terms from the article
  --Linking of reference in the bibliography.

It was a very fruitful discussion since I can now teach these features to my patrons.

Passing of Professor William Spillers

We were just notified of the sudden passing of William Spillers, Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering at NJIT. I have known Bill since I came to NJIT in 1992. He will be sorely missed by the NJIT community.

Colleagues and students of Bill’s who wish to leave a public message of condolence or share a favorite memory are encouraged to do so at http://rememberingbillspillers.blogspot.com/.

User Survey vs Focus Group - Which is Better?

It is important to elicit feedback from library customers to determine the degree of satisfaction. No service organization can please all its users all of the time, but they must constantly strive to improve. We must build on our strengths and work on weaknesses. However, we must know where there is dissatisfaction before we know how to make adjustments.

It is beyond the scope of this blog entry to discuss in detail focus groups and user surveys. I refer my readers to these sites:

• Focus Group
• User Survey

The difficulty in arranging focus groups is that students are very reluctant to come even when offered compensation and a free lunch. We are asking them to give up an hour of their time. Perhaps they feel that what they say would not change a situation. We can also attribute this to apathy. Even a successful focus group only has about 10 participants. Such a small sample can never give representative feedback. I feel that a focus group works best when evaluating a product rather than a service.

A user survey is not perfect, but it at least reaches more people. It should be designed to take no longer than 10 minutes to complete. It should be more than just multiple choice questions and allow users to make comments. As an inducement to participate, an award (gift certificate to the bookstore) should be offered to one person in a lottery.

Design Thinking and Libraries

Today we were informed that Steven Bell of Temple University will be the speaker at our staff retreat on May 21. 5 years ago Steven was the speaker at our retreat held at New Jersey City University when he spoke about blended librarians. Rich Sweeney distributed a list of his publications concerning innovation and design in relation to libraries. The following paper was of interest to me:

Bell, Steven J. "Design Thinking." American Libraries 39.1/2 (2008): 44-49. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 9 Apr. 2010.

I will quote two sentences from this paper:

"What can librarians do to create experiences that are memorable? That's where design thinking may help by providing a framework for identifying problems that prevent the delivery of great user experiences."

I was thinking about how over recent years the gate count of the NJIT library has dropped as enrollment has increased. There are legitimate reasons for this:

1. The student center was greatly expanded providing more study spaces
2. There are large lounges in the Honors College and Biomedical Engineering Department both located in Fenster Hall
3. Since the price of laptops has decreased, more students have them and don't need to use the computers in the information commons as they once did.

What service does the library provide which is not available anywhere else on campus?

• Group Study Rooms

During exam periods, it is almost impossible to get one. How can the Robert Van Houten Library provide more group study rooms to attract more people to the library?

Bound periodicals which take up most of the space on the second and third floors are now used minimally. I would love to see most of the bound periodicals consolidated so that the entire third floor can be devoted to those rooms of various sizes. I would insist that the bound periodicals be placed in a storage area that is readily accessible for users.

Problem - Design innovations cost money which is very scarce these days.

1. We would need space and compact shelving for these lesser used bound periodicals
2. There would be construction costs entailed with creating new group study rooms.

When I first came to NJIT Joel Bloom told us "We are as good as our weakest point." For all these years lack of funding has thwarted much of the strategic planning in the library.

Just my thoughts on a Friday afternoon.

Judy Cohn of UMDNJ to speak on NJIT about Open Access Publications

Thursday, April 8th, 4:00 - 5:30
Room 112 Eberhardt
University Workshop Series - Spring 2010
Revitalizing Your Academic Experience
"Spiraling Costs of Scholarly Journals & the Future of Open Access Publications; What Can a Faculty Member Do?"
Judy Cohn
Associate VP for Scholarly Information
University Librarian
UMDNJ

How Much Time Should Librarians Spend at Professional Meetings?

It is important for all professionals to keep abreast of developments in their respective specialties. We can do that by taking advanced courses or attending professional meetings that can last from one hour to several days. Since information technologies are changing so rapidly, it is especially important for librarians to know what is going on. Time spent at meetings takes us away from our daily responsibilities to our customers. We must always remember that the tuition dollars spent by students pay our salaries.

I am Facebook friends with colleagues at many universities. I have observed that a few of them always seem to be traveling to a meeting or at a conference. I must assume that their supervisors approve of this, but if they spend an excessive amount of time at a meeting, they are letting their daily responsibilities slide. Universities usually pay for their people to attend meetings. Costs for travel, food, and registration, can really add up.

In the past I have gone to one major meeting (for me the American Chemical Society National Meeting) and several short local ones in the course of a year. In the past year I have had to use my own funds for most of it since the travel budget at NJIT has been tight.

I am asking my colleagues who are reading this their opinion on how much time is appropriate for librarians to spend at professional meetings.