Librarians Should be Free to Criticize Publishers Without Fear of Lawsuits

I read this article I found on a post on a librarian’s listserv.  A librarian now at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada is being sued by a private publisher since he criticized that publisher in a blog post a few years ago when he was employed by Kansas State University.  That blog post was subsequently deleted.

I have learned to be carefully when posting on this and on my other blogs(Bruce's Journal and NYNJcommuting) since anyone can read comments on the internet.  Certainly publishers should be criticized if their works are substandard.  If they disagree with the criticism, they certainly have a right to refute the claims.  Filing a law suit only creates more hostility while only the lawyers gain by it.  I hope that this legal nonsense stops since McMaster University is being sued for $3.5 Million while the librarian is being sued for $1 million.  Hopefully a judge will throw it out of court since academic freedom is being attacked.  In my opinion the law suit is creating more animosity against this publisher.

My questions are:

• How many people saw the blog post before it was taken down?
• Did this publisher lose any money as a result of the blog post?

John Borchardt - Career Consultant to the Very End

I admire people who are devoted to helping others.  It is always difficult to for any professional to find a position in their respective profession and develop throughout his career.  The American Chemical Society has a career consultants program to assist chemists at all stages of their careers.  I have been such a consultant for a long time, but must admit that in recent years I have not been active in the program.  My specialty is to advise laboratory chemists of the career option of chemical information specialist or science librarian.

John Borchardt was proactive in the program and wrote number articles on job hunting and other career issues.  He wrote the following book:

Borchardt, J. K. (2000). Career management for scientists and engineers. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society.

Today I found out about his untimely passing in January.  He was at a Career Consultants meeting in Dallas and sadly passed away in his hotel room.  He was devoted to helping fellow professionals with career issues until the very end.  I had the pleasure of meeting him a few times at ACS national meetings.  His thoughts will survive in his writings.  He will be sorely missed by his colleagues.  My condolences to his family

Helping Students Develop Alternative Searching Strategies Using Google and Wikipedia at NJIT

Last night I taught information seeking skills to students of ENE 360 (Fundamentals of Water and Wastewater Treatment).  Since these students had seen me lecture in a previous course, I decided to spend more time with helping them to develop search strategies.  I wanted to show how searching Google and the Wikipedia could help them develop search strategies.  Students are tempted to use the literal terminology of the topic of their paper.  Let me give two examples.

1.Find papers discussing water sustainability focusing on emerging contaminants (those not regulated)

The obvious search strategy is water sustainability AND emerging contaminants.

A search is Scopus yielded several good articles on this topic.  When I searched for the phrase “emerging contaminants” in Google I found this very useful web site:

http://www.creec.net/whatareec.htm  - Site of the Consortium for Research and Education of Emerging Contaminants.  It gave detergents, fragrances, prescription and nonprescription drugs, disinfectants, and pesticides as examples of emerging contaminants.  Thus an alternative search strategy would be:

Water sustainability AND pesticides

2. Find papers discussing water sustainability focusing on Advanced Oxidation.

Again the obvious search strategy is Water sustainability AND Advanced Oxidation, but what is meant by advanced oxidation.  I found this entry in the Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_oxidation_process

This article stated:

Advanced Oxidation Process refers to a set of chemical treatment procedures designed to remove organic (and sometimes inorganic) materials in water and waste water by oxidation through reactions with hydroxyl radicals (·OH). In real-world applications of wastewater treatment, however, this term usually refers more specifically to a subset of such chemical processes that employ ozone (O₃), hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) and/or UV light. One such type of process is called in situ chemical oxidation

.

Thus an alternative search strategy would be:

Water sustainabilty AND oxidation AND peroxide

.

Hopefully, the students learned from this as my lecture was likely their third exposure to information literacy as students at NJIT.