Reference & Collections Blog

When librarians are obstacles

Interesting post about librarians and open education...Read it at http://mollykleinman.com/.

Reading Rooms on Campus

Jean has updated the Reading Room list which can be found on the Intranet under Shared Documents. Here's a direct URL:

https://share.uvic.ca/libr/units/ref/Shared%20Documents/reading%20rooms%20june%202010.pdf

Canadian Virtual Health Library

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) have approved an application for $800,000 to establish a Canadian Virtual Health Library (CVHL).

"The CVHL is a component of the National Network of Libraries for Health, a
project of the Canadian Health Libraries Association / Association des
bibliothèques de la santé du Canada. By leveraging existing resources and
services through a coordinated network of libraries, the CVHL will ensure that
all health professionals, wherever they are in Canada, have ready access to
health information of high quality."

This project was 10 years in the making! For more details on the project please see http://www.chla-absc.ca/nnlh/cvhl.htm.

Library and Archives Canada has put a moratorium on buying paper documents and books for its collection

see http://www.cbc.ca/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2009/06/18/pei-archives-paper-digital.html?ref=rss for more information.

CABI Swine Flu Dashboard

CABI today has announced free access to its specialist Global Health database – the definitive database for public health information – www.cabdirect.org/globalhealth
Simultaneously CABI has developed a Swine flu 'dashboard' that brings together up-to-the-minute information on the virus ( http://www.netvibes.com/cabialerts).The 'dashboard' includes resources from CABI and critical advice from key health organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

"Our mission is to help people worldwide through the provision of scientific knowledge," said Dr Trevor Nicholls, CEO of CABI. "Today we are offering our most applicable resource, over the coming weeks, to help health professionals and others working on the front line."

In a fast changing sequence of events that has led to the rapid escalation of concern from WHO, and the reaction of national governments in considering their response to a possible influenza pandemic, release of the database is designed to give urgently needed support to those who need it
most: scientists, medical professionals and health authorities investigating the causes and treatments of the disease and linkages to past outbreaks.

Influenza researchers urgently need to be able to refer back to previous scientific work in this area to understand the behaviour of previous strains of the virus and to research effective mechanisms for handling earlier outbreaks.

The Global Health database brings together global knowledge on every aspect of influenza since 1910. The knowledge it contains could provide a key weapon in health researchers' response in understanding and controlling the virus.

Much of the data in Global Health is derived from publications that have long since vanished. They tell us a great deal about past pandemics, from rates and patterns of transmission, duration, timing of epidemiological peaks, geographical distribution of the disease, government preparedness and quarantine provisions through to effects on different age and social groups, severity in developing versus developed countries, symptoms, causes of mortality (secondary problems, especially pneumonia, were devastating in the Spanish flu) and mortality rates.

By opening the door to a wealth of historical information on past pandemics, the Global Health database has the potential to reveal vital clues in the international fight against swine flu (influenza A – H1N1).

CABI Swine Flu Dashboard - www.cabdirect.org/globalhealth Global Health database - http://www.netvibes.com/cabialerts

Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan for the Health Sector

The Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan for the Health Sector can be found at http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/cpip-pclcpi/pdf-e/cpip-eng.pdf. Please take note that it’s 550 pages long so you won’t want to print it all out!

Swine Flu

To keep up to date and for more information on the human swine influenza please visit the Public Health Agency of Canada at http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/alert-alerte/swine_200904-eng.php , the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) at http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/index.htm, or the World Health Organization at http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en/index.html.

Also, "due to the recent global outbreak of Swine Influenza, EBSCO Publishing and the DynaMed Editors have made DynaMed’s information about Swine Influenza free to health care providers and institutions throughout the world. The DynaMed topic on Swine Influenza consolidates information from multiple sources for health care providers to stay current with recommendations for monitoring, diagnosing, and treating patients with flu-like illnesses during this outbreak. DynaMed Editors will continue to monitor information and update this topic as needed throughout this global crisis. Please click on the following link for information regarding Swine Influenza:
http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed/swineflu/.

DynaMed is a point-of-care reference resource designed to provide clinicians with the best available evidence to support clinical decision-making. DynaMed is part of the suite of medical products owned and provided by EBSCO Publishing and is updated daily by monitoring medical literature sources."

Cochrane Library now available to all Canadians (9 month trial)

CHLA/ABSC and the National Cochrane Library Pilot

Even though we already have access to the Cochrane Library through OVID, it's great to hear that "the Cochrane Library is now available to all Canadians for a nine month trial period ending December 31, 2009. This pilot project is a joint initiative of the Canadian Cochrane Network and Centre and the Canadian Health Library Association / Association des bibliothèques de la santé du Canada (CHLA/ABSC).

Why is a pilot project needed?

While there is some information from the experiences with existing national, provincial and regional licensing initiatives, there is a need to evaluate the impact and use of the Cochrane Library as a pan-Canadian resource. This will support the development of a business case that is clearly based on demonstrated value. The pilot project will address the following questions:

* Which constituencies are not covered by existing licensing arrangements?
* What is the impact and use of the Cochrane Library when these gaps in access are addressed?
* Are there potential cost and administrative savings to be achieved through a coordinated national license?
* Can a sustainable funding model for a single national license to the Cochrane Library be developed?
* What supports and resources do Cochrane Library users require?

Who already has access to the Cochrane Library?

Internationally, the citizens of Australia, England, Finland, Ireland, India, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Scotland, Spain, Sweden and Wales can freely access the Cochrane Library. Efforts are underway in the European Union to establish equitable access throughout their 25 member states. The Cochrane Library is also provided free of charge to people in the world’s poorest countries. In fact, half the world’s population has access right now!

In Canada there are currently more than 150 Canadian subscriptions to the Cochrane Library. Current licensing initiatives are in place for some provinces, territories and health regions and professional organizations, as well as staff students and faculty at most Canadian universities and teaching hospitals. However despite this significant cumulative investment in licensing across Canada, many health care providers, consumers, researchers and decision makers do not have access.

Why is CHLA/ABSC supporting this pilot?

A nationally coordinated license to the Cochrane Library is an important first step towards the vision for a National Network of Libraries for Health (NNLH). CHLA/ABSC has been working actively with the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information and other partners to develop and promote this vision. The NNLH is designed to leverage and link existing resources to ensure that all health care providers in Canada will have easy access to the best information for patient care. It is designed to fit the Canadian health care model and fill in the information gaps inherent in a complex health delivery system. For additional information please see: http://chla-absc.ca/nnlh/indexe.htm

How can I help?

* Let your library users, colleagues, friends and family know about the Cochrane Library.
* Share your stories about the impact of this access.
* Assist in evaluation activities as needed.

What do I do if I can’t find the information I need in the Cochrane Library?

If you are affiliated with a health or public library, they can provide assistance in finding the information you require.

The NRC Canada Institute for Scientific for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI), Canada’s national science library, provides information tools and services to the Canadian medical and health sciences community. Contact NRC-CISTI at
info.cisti@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca.

You may also find these Canadian evidence-based resources useful:

Health-evidence.ca
http://health-evidence.ca

Public health+
http://www.nccmt.ca/tools/public_health_plus-eng.html

Questions about this initiative?

Please e-mail info@chla-absc.ca

April Fool's story in yesterday's Guardian

Check out this April Fool's story in yesterday's Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/01/guardian-twitter-media-technology

Prediction on librarianship

An interesting prediction about librarianship in the future (http://www.taigaforum.org/documents/Taiga%204%20Statements%20After.pdf. Needless to say, it has been causing a lot of discussion on the Music Library Listserv.

Ref librarians in the age of Google

For an interesting read on the future of Reference I recommend the article by a Duke University Librarian at http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/dukemag/issues/091008/brave1.html

My Access notes

My notes from the Access 2008 conference.

In summary:
LibX
VuFind and VuFind Browse
User Behaviour is baffling to librarians.
Memorial U's digital initiatives
Drupal Houston at University Libraries and their awesome Subject Guides.
Open Source Integrated Library Systems to save the world.

Read my full notes here - it's only a few pages, point form, with more links and my amusing commentary, too.

Publication Practices

Why Current Publication Practices May Distort Science.

Published in PLoS Medicine
October 2008 | Volume 5 | Issue 10 | e201

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050201

Continuous Publication (new publishing model)

Here's a new way of publishing journal articles that won't tie citations to a print issue.

"Continuous publication.
Godlee, Fiona; Delamothe, Tony; Smith, Jane
BMJ. 2008 June 28;336(7659):1450 [not in PubMed]

>> The BMJ is about to undergo another shift in the way that it
publishes its content, which we hope will provide benefits for both
readers and authors. From the beginning of July we will be publishing
content continuously on bmj.com. All our articles will be published on
line as they become ready, so bmj.com will update several times a day.
Once published, articles will then be selected for a subsequent print
issue.

[snip - PDFs will be of multipage sections, not individual articles]

An important aspect of the change is in the way that articles will be
organised and cited. The online "publish ahead of print" model that we
have been using for research articles assumed that they would eventually
be published in a print issue, and the ultimate citation for that
article derived from that print issue. Thus, when it was first
published, an online first article had a year and a doi (a unique
identifier for a digital object)-for example, BMJ 2008 doi:10.1136/
bmj.012334.5678.BM-but when it later appeared in print, the definitive
citation for that article became the traditional one of year, volume,
and page number:BMJ 2008;336:123-5.

From now on, each article will have only one, permanent, citation and it
will no longer derive from print. The citation will be year, volume,
e-locator (a unique identifier for that article)-for example, BMJ
2008;337:a145-and this is what will appear in Medline, PubMed, and other
bibliographical indexes. We will print this citation on every item we
publish, in print and online, and authors will need to use it when they
cite these BMJ articles.

Highwire Press, who provide our web platform and have built the tools
that enable us to publish continuously, predict that in a few years'
time "everyone will be doing it." We hope that our authors and readers
will see the benefits, and as always we welcome your feedback."

Music & Media A/V Equipment

Music & Media now offers a full range of audio visual equipment loans, as well as eight multimedia workstations with extensive software.

http://library.uvic.ca/site/dept/access/media/Gear2Go.html
http://library.uvic.ca/site/dept/access/media/MediaIMac.html

Equipment loans are available to support students completing course assignments and for faculty creating course content.

Camera, camcorders, and audio recorders may be borrowed until the next day at 3:00 pm, with the option of one renewal.

Equipment is borrowed on a drop-in basis and there are five of each device available.

Equipment waivers are signed, and the overdue fines are up to $30 per hour, with up to $750 in replacement charges.

One of each equipment type is available for express loan and is due in three hours with $10 per hour overdue fines.

We also have noise-canceling headphones, USB headsets, portable DVD players, graphics tablets, and a variety of cables and connectors.

The library has a collection of audio-visual equipment for use by library staff that is external to these loans.

Camcorders and audio recorders can be booked online:

https://triton.library.uvic.ca/mrbs/day.php3?year=2008&month=09&day=17&area=10

There is a camera on the fourth floor. If you need help using it, Music & Media staff can help as it’s similar to the ones we loan.

The multimedia iMac computers are for educational drop-in use. There are four flatbed scanners available and a colour copier (soon to be print release station too) in the area.

The Learning Commons assistants and the Music & Media staff will provide support for these computers.

In the fall we will introduce two editing rooms with iMacs and a broad range of audio-visual hardware and composition tools for writing, editing, and digitizing multimedia projects.

There is a spotlight running on the library website to advertise these services to users:

http://blogs.library.uvic.ca/index.php/libnews/2008/09/17/what-s-new-at-music-aamp-media

IMP Library Newsletter

For those interested in perusing the latest Island Medical Program Library Newsletter - Download file.

Exam Proctoring

Any student who needs someone to proctor/invigilate an exam, can contact the Resource Centre for Students With a Disability. Janis Stewart at the RCSD is the person to contact (jstewart@uvic.ca, x4947). The RCSD will proctor exams for UVic and non-UVic students.

UBC Medical Education

For those who are interested - The September issue of BC Medical Journal (BCMJ) focuses on UBC Medical Education: http://www.bcmj.org/.

Theses - update from Tech Services

FYI -- A note from Cheryl in Tech Services about theses:

"I am currently adding about 150-200 theses titles to the catalog this week (and maybe into next week)? (These are already in DSpace but hadn't been catalogued)"

Binding

A message from the staff in binding:

The commercial binder closes for a couple of weeks every summer; add to that our two week turn-around, and books that were sent for binding earlier this week will not be available until late August. Patrons should be advised to submit the regular recall notice, which then goes to Binding & Processing and if the item is one that was sent this week, Bindery staff will inform Access Services whether the item is one that will not be available until late August, and the patron will then be advised to put a request thru’ ILL with the note that the material is at binding until late August. This is an annual occurrence; books at binding are not normally considered by the ILLO.

New Phone - One more thing

Just a reminder to turn OFF the phone at the end of the day. If we forget then the phone takes several hours to re-charge in the morning and will not work until charged. The best workaround is probably to dial in to voice mail from another phone to check messages. I've just checked now (about noon) and there are none. It's not ideal, but it will work (and remember, no babies will die). Cheers, T.

New phone

Hi Everyone - a couple of known problems with the new phone keep cropping up. The first is a major design flaw. The volume for the ringer and the speaker is on the handset and if you accidentally hit these buttons the volume will change. If you notice the lack of ringing and then notice calls on voice mail, check the volume adjustment first. There are some other network problems that the phone people know about and are testing. The other problem is the tiny-ness of the phone and trying to answer a question while using the computer -- there is a hold button which I think puts people into listening to some music (we should find out!) and that's probably easiest. The soft key above the green key I think is the hold - and then also the resume talking key. We are testing this phone - in other words, we may not get to keep it forever. Please continue to report problems to me. Thanks, T.

gear 2 go 2 start!

Posted on behalf of Carlie Graham

Hello Everyone,

We are very excited to announce we are beginning a soft launch of our Gear 2 Go loans today! This service loans equipment to students to support their learning. We will also loan out the equipment to faculty who want to familiarize themselves with the devices to prepare for their courses where the devices will be integrated into assignments.

Today we will begin loaning out digital audio recorders from the Music & Media desk. We will be adding in the camera and camcorder loans later this month, and I will be sending updates as we add more gear…..2 go!

Here are the details:

5 audio recorders bookable for a 3 day loan, due back at 3pm on the 3rd day; fines are $30 per day

1 audio recorder held for express 3 hour loans; fines are $10 per hour

Replacement costs are $750, and the students sign a waiver similar to the laptop lending agreement.

We also have many other accessories that we will begin loaning. Today we will also start signing out noise cancelling headphones for use in the library, and 6 we have set aside to be loaned out with the audio recorders for easy playback.

Other accessories that will be launched in the future are:

Powerpoint remotes

USB headsets

Portable DVD players

Tripods

Various cables (ie. mini USB to USB, firewire, iMac adapters, etc)

Our iMac computers have been installed but are not quite ready for public consumption.

We may even be loaning out pedometers to support ActiveU! Stay tuned for exciting developments…

If you have any questions please feel free to contact Carlie Graham

Supplies for sale at the loan desk

Posted on behalf of John Harris

FYI...

April 9th is our first day of selling stationary and multimedia supplies at the loan desk. Various items are available for sale from CDs and flash drives to pencils and pens. All items are listed on the menus which can be found at the front desk beside the cash register. A menu has also been located at the Reference and IC desk.

John

Data Collection (Print & CDROM items) Temporarily Relocated

Although most of the Libraries Data Collection is electronic, and, as such, is housed on the Libraries Data Acquisition Service (DAS) server, there is also a small set of older print items (User Guides and Code Books), and, a growing collection of CDROM material that is also a part of the Libraries Data Collection.

Items in the Libraries Data Collection are in the process of being catalogued. As part of the cataloguing project, a new DATA location code was created for the print and CDROM items. For these items the bib record display was previously set to read as Location: Data Collection (Reference Workroom).

Given the renovation activity that is transforming the old Reference Workroom into the new Learning Commons, the print and CDROM items in the Libraries Data Collection have been removed from the old Reference Workroom and are temporarily being housed in one of the new Reference Offices up on the second floor. As a consequence, for those print and CDROM items in the Data Collection that have already been catalogued, the location field in Voyager has been changed to read: Location: Data Collection (Reference Office A231).

The door to Reference Office A231 is unlocked, so if you find a print item, or a CDROM, in Voyager, that is assigned to the Data Collection, then A231 is where you will find these items.

For example:
1) Search in Voyager for the CDROM product titled Heart health in Canada.
2) Search in Voyager for DLI Survey with the title National Graduates Survey

Curric Library Practicum Loan Periods

A message from the Curric folks regarding the Curriculum Library Practicum Loan 2008

As of March 31, all Curric books, CDs, cassettes and kits will be unavailable to be recalled during the Practicum Loan period.

Beginning Monday, April 7, Curric items signed out to Undergrads will be due on Monday, June 2, 2008.

Please direct any questions to the Curric Library staff, 721-7900.

Supplies vending machine gone

The vending machine that used to sell pens, CDs, etc has gone and will be replaced by the sale of supplies from the Loan Desk starting April 1st. Until then, people will have to go to the bookstore or elsewhere for emergency supplies (as told to me by staff at Loan Desk).

Cool Display on Escalating Journal Prices!

Check out the new Cornell University Library exhibit on journal prices:
http://astech.library.cornell.edu/ast/engr/about/StickerShock2.cfm. It's done for Engineering but is relevant for other disciplines, too.

Music books on the second floor

Here is the message from Maureen about the ML's and MT's.

Bill

Music books on second floor

Many of you know that the Music scores ("M" call numbers) are now shelved on the main floor, between the Information Commons terminals and the new Music & Media desk.

Now the rest of the Music book collection (ML - MT) has been moved to the new shelving on second floor, directly across from the new elevator. We will soon have temporary range end labels in place, as soon as final adjustments are made to the area. (FYI - the lights for this area are next to the new elevator.)

For now, Music books can still be separated during discharge and unloaded onto the labelled M, ML, and MT shelves just inside the basement sorting room door.

There are now ML - MT book and journal shelves in the second floor sorting room, for those doing searches or directing patrons.

The old MAMS area is now empty, awaiting renovation. (However, we have discovered that the lights for the new basement corridor are operated by the old MAMS light switches!)

Thanks, Maureen

Want to Practice Searching the Medical Literature?

If you want to practice searching the medical literature go to the JMLA Case Studies in Health Sciences Librarianship blog. Each Monday a "search challenge" question is posted.
Then, each Friday a search strategy and other thoughts on that question are posted.

Another online searching practice opportunity is available through
the Pacific Northwest region of the Medical Library Association which is currently doing an online seminar called "Awakening the Searcher Within." This bi-weekly web session includes a different question to work on for each session. If you're interested in joining in, you can find more information at: http://nnlm.gov/pnr/dragonfly/2008/01/30/awakening-the-searcher-within/.

New Medical Library Blog for Island Medical Program

The UBC M.D. Undergraduate Program Librarians (me, one at UNBC and two at UBC) have created a Library & Informatics blog for the undergraduate medical students. Check it out at http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/medlibrary/. Please note that many of the links are to resources at UBC Library and so won't work for you.

Legislative Library - Update

Thanks to Caron for checking into the Legislative Library 'rules' for us. Referrals are no longer necessary. The only thing that matters is whether the House is in session or not. If not, students are welcome to use the Leg. Library. If the House is in session then the Library is closed to all. I've updated the online Ref. manual and will do away with that terrible green binder we've used for all these years.

Ref Desk new voicemail

With the new voicemail system it seems that a message is still called 'new' even if it's been listened to, unless you specifically save it by pressing '9' after listening. If it's possible, please save messages that have been heard and dealt with ... so that we can avoid bothering people with multiple callbacks. Thanks muchly.

PE143 Assignment

I met with PE143 students today (about 110 of them) and they are working on an assignment that asks them to use Academic Search and/or Sport Discus using advanced search. Here's the handout they received in case anyone needs it. Download file

Several students were away in the afternoon class so there may be questions at the desk. It's pretty straightforward, just a lot of people doing the same things. Feel free to refer folks to email me if necessary. Thanks.

New England Journal of Medicine

Since 2001, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has provided free
access to original research articles, six-months after publication. This
free access has required individual registration on the NEJM website.

As of December 19, 2007, the Journal now provides free access to
original research articles (Original Articles and Special Articles),
six-months after publication, with no registration required.

The NEJM website hosts full-text articles from 1993 to present.

A subscription is still required to access other Journal content.

The Journal will continue to make articles of immediate public health
importance available free to all visitors upon publication.

Video Browse application

The Video Browse application is now out of the Beta stage. It allows for searching in the catalogue for videos by language, by genre and also you are able to browse an a - z title list. Please take a look and if you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Right now it is linked off the Music Media and Audio Services page or you can go to it directly (http://triton.library.uvic.ca/videolist/index.php)

Bill

Native newspapers on microfilm

Just a note that we now have the Contemporary Newspapers of the North American Indian on microfilm. Take a look in the catalogue for the record. All titles have been added to the bib record to make it more accessible. This should be a really useful resource for anyone studying in this area.

On Students Today

Here's a link to a very revealing YouTube video about student experience which was shown in a pre- conference workshop in Seattle yesterday. Michael Wesch from Kansas State University and his students created it. A Vision of Students Today

Reported in a TLT Group newsletter.

Psych project

About 12 students have been assigned the following task - to find a unique article with commentary, on a particular topic (Theoretical orientation and psychotherapy) - they need the original article and commentary, and their prof will keep track so that there is no duplication.

I discovered that the way to do this was to search in PsychInfo, under Advanced, and limit 'Article Type' to [reply/commentary]. Then you can track back to the original articles by finding them on the 'refs cited' list. No, the original article is not listed in the abstract, nor is there a link provided to it.

The student was concerend becuase we only found 6 such comments... not sure what can be done about that.

Now you know!

Facebook and Rapport article

Great and fascinating article about the place of libraries (and librarians) in Face book - to sum up, we need to understand and work with Facebook culture, not force it to conform to our paradigm.

http://otherlibrarian.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/facebook-and-rapport/

Facebook groups for librarians

Hottest Facebook groups for librarians, from iLibrarian...

http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2007/hottest-facebook-groups-for-librarians/

"library website" =/ Library web presence

http://www.librarywebchic.net/wordpress/2007/09/16/the-future-of-web-services-isnt-the-library-website/

A recent post about the need for decentralized library web services -
"This has been a very difficult concept to get library non-techies to understand. It's one thing to have a great website that gives people what they need when they get there (and most libraries need improvement in this area, for starters), but it's a totally different thing to actually create a number of points of access all over the web, in the places your users are. And those presences need to be substantial enough to engage your users, to give them what they want then and there.

Creating a MySpace page that says "click here for the catalog" and "click here to find out about our databases" isn't enough. It's a good start, but putting a catalog quick-search box on the MySpace page and listing your popular databases on the MySpace profile is even better. Treat it like a mini-site for your library. Start with one place, then move along to another -- but don't forget to maintain and keep all the other presences current at the same time. "

Elsevier's latest tactic

"The New York Times reports this morning that Elsevier has started a
new website (http://www.oncologystat.com) that allows registered
oncologists to get free access to the latest articles from 100 of
their journals, and that Elsevier plans to sell advertisements to go
with the content.

Article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/business/media/10journal.html?ref=business (free, but registration required)

Evidently Elsevier's revenue is flat, and online readership is
growing faster than print subscriptions, so Elsevier is going after
new revenue. A senior Elsevier VP said the total online advertising
market is growing in double digits, and said they expect it will be a
$1 billion opportunity within the next two years. (I think this is
meant total online advertising, not just Elsevier's share, although
you never know.)

The article points out that while teaching center oncologists
typically have access to these articles (libraries aren't mentioned
as the source...), non-teaching center oncologists see about 85
percent of all cancer patients, and rely on the internet as their
link to the knowledge base.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. If successful,
Elsevier may expand this to other specialties."

Top 10 Facebook apps for librarians

As promised....

Top 10 Facebook apps for librarians, from iLibrarian, part One

Part Two

Part Three

Includes:

Books iRead
Libguides
Librarian
myFlickr
slideshare
Several library catalogues (someday, ours?)
del.icio.us
Jstor
My Wikipedia

History Research Workshops

Details of the upcoming History Research Workshop Series are available here: http://gateway.uvic.ca/lib/instruction/workshops.html

Open to everyone, each half hour workshop will cover one aspect of History Research, here at McPherson Library. Topics include Journals, Ebooks, Images, Maps, several specific new resources, newspapers, popular magazines, and more. The goal is to introduce a variety of different sources, promote some new resources, and do some PR for the History Librarian.

These are in keeping with our new (still experimental) new format for all basic instruction - the single topic, half-hour workshop.

Public Access Computers

There are notices at the desk advertising the change to UVic McPherson Library Public Access Computers. These are printed on salmon/coral coloured paper. If you haven't see one yet, take a look. Basically it says that beginning August 2007, library users will have to logon through the Public Access Logon page using their Netlink account. Community members can set up a netlink account at student facilities group in computing in Clearihue (http://www.sfg.uvic.ca/access.htm#visitor)

I suspect this isn't fully operational yet as the macs still exist, but just thought I'd pass along what I'd read.

Teaching & Learning/IL/Library Instruction conferences for 2008

A number of you were interested in upcoming conferences. Note that many are located not too far from Victoria in the upcoming year.

- EDUCAUSE; Oct 23-26, 2007; Seattle
- EDUCAUSE; Oct 28-31, 2008; Orlando
- Augustana IL Workshop; Dec 10, 2007; Camrose, AB
- American Educational Researchers Association; Mar 24-28, 2008; New York City
- LOEX; May 1-3, 2008; Oak Brook, IL
- WILU; May 14-16, 2008; Kelowna
- CLA: May 21-24, 2008; Vancouver
- Canadian Society for Studies in Education; May 31-Jun 3, 2008; Vancouver
- Canadian Association for Information Science; Jun 5-7, 2008; Vancouver
- Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education; Jun 18-21, 2008; Windsor
- ACRL; Mar 12-15, 2009; Seattle

A number of conferences that should appear on this list 'Canadian Learning Commons' conference for example, do not yet have dates. More info as it becomes available.

Pia

First step for a (Canadian) National Network of Libraries for Health

"Good news!

The NNLH/RNBS task force has the go ahead from Canada Health Infoway for the Phase 0 stage of a Virtual Health Library (VHL) project.

The project start date is August 1st and has an end date of February 15th, as
noted in the project proposal.

From the proposal:

"The Phase 0 project will refine and validate the model for the creation of a
Virtual Health Library as a first step in the development of a robust and
viable network that will ensure that health care providers across the country
have easy and equitable access to the best information for patient care. The
Virtual Health Library (VHL) will eventually complement work currently being
done across the country on the electronic health record, providing fast and
easy navigation from clinical questions arising from the health record to
evidence bases resources. It will add a key component to the spectrum of
information resources that should ultimately be available to health providers
across the country. Development of the Virtual Health Library will both
further the Canada Health Infoway mission to foster and accelerate the
development and adoption of electronic health information systems with
compatible standards and communications technologies on a pan-Canadian basis, and benefit from the structures and expertise developed through other CHI pan-Canadian initiatives."

Librarian career film, c. 1960s

Just in case we've forgotten why we do this...

Spectacles - How Pop Culture Views Librarians

Check out this amusing website - it's based on a presentation given at the SLA conference in early June.

Spectacles - How Pop Culture Views Librarians

Personally, I'm most intrigued by the "Read or Die" series... ;p

Image builders

I've been playing with image builders, and having a great time.
Check out ImageChef.com ImageGenerator.org and CustomSignGenerator. Quick ways to spice up your material!

McMaster's new Endeca catalogue

This is the coolest... note the left hand menu bar, which lists limits to your results list - millions of them! Well, lots and lots...

http://libcat.mcmaster.ca/

This is the most useable catalogue I've seen in actual use. Check it out!

Wikipedia finds support with students

This is really alarming - a group of students who are lobbying for their professors to accept Wikipedia as a citable source:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2252936885

Also alarming is the instruction to use it anyway, but instead of citing the site, cite the source referenced by the site. SO MUCH CHEATING wow...

I also love the characterization that all librarians are 'bitchy'. Why is there not a community to Uphold Academic Standards?

I found this, by the way, in a search to see if there was a 'modified librarians' community on facebook - alas, there is not.

neat stuff

WOnderful slide show on what Second Life is, and libraries role in it:

The 5 weeks to a social library course that everyone is talking about:

Netlibrary tutorials on YouTube:

7 strategies for marketing in a web 2.0 world

And my
current favourite library blog where I learn about these fabulous things:

illustration of barriers

http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2007/03/25/finding_time_at_penn_state.html

"losing time at Penn State" - a graphic illustration of the barriers that our users face, when confronted with confusing, librarian-centric library web sites...

I thought this reminded me of observing our focus tests... Read the next entry below for the Shifted Librarian's notes on the NextGen libraries conference that she attended recently - it all rings true with what we currently know.

Widget update

The widget looks as though it is on the right time, but it's still one hour behind. Adrian is no longer our resource for fixes, so I've sent a message to systems with the hope that someone there can fix this. For now, if you add stats manually, you can set the correct time and capture stats precisely. If you forget to do this please don't fret. The only time of day where you really could add stats manually is from 9 to 10 in the morning because with the time mixed up, the widget thinks it's 8 to 9 a.m. instead! I will keep you posted as I hear more. -- Tracie

Elsevier & Arms Sales

This from Royal Society of Medicine www site (dated 20 February, 2007) may be of interest. From http://www.rsm.ac.uk/media/pr234.htm

Lancet publishers condemned over promotion of arms
Reed Elsevier, the publisher of The Lancet, has today been condemned by a former editor of the British Medical Journal for its involvement in the promotion of arms sales.

Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Richard Smith urges scientists and academics to publish their research and findings elsewhere.

“Reed Elsevier is one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific and medical journals and the finest of its journals is the Lancet, the leading global health journal,” said Dr Smith.

“Indeed, The Lancet has been receiving much attention from the Pentagon for its important articles showing that death rates in Iraq are far above those admitted by the United States government and yet its publishers promote arms fairs.

“The blatant hypocrisy doesn’t end there either. Reed Elsevier runs arms fairs through its subsidiary Reed Exhibitions in Britain, the United States, the Middle East, Brazil, Germany, and Taiwan which is the same subsidiary that runs Lancet conferences, including the forthcoming one in Asia.”

Dr Smith describes how The Lancet itself has: “told us how the fairs have in the past included cluster bombs, which are especially dangerous to civilians because they fail to explode and create minefields. Last year’s fair in the US included torture equipment sold by Security Equipment Corporation who use the grotesque slogan ‘Making grown men cry since 1975’.”

Dr Smith argues the best way of appealing to Reed Elsevier is by threatening its business. He writes:

“What might be the actions of the editors, authors, and readers of not only The Lancet but also the other 2000 medical and scientific journals published by Reed Elsevier? Alone they might achieve little, but together they might force the company to change, not by appealing to its non-existent conscience but through threatening its business.

“It is the scientific and medical part of Reed Elsevier that is the most profitable: in 2005 its sales totalled £1436 million, or 28% of total Reed Elsevier sales, and its profits were £449 million, or 37% of the company’s total profits.

“The scientific and medical part of the business is so profitable because of the extraordinary value of the science it publishes. This is where Reed Elsevier is vulnerable-were those researchers to go elsewhere, the company would promptly pull out of arms exhibitions. And, of course, those researchers might leave and never return.”

Dr Kamran Abbasi, editor of the JRSM, added: “The editors of The Lancet have in the past taken a brave stance against Reed Elsevier’s involvement in promoting arms sales. But it seems that larger profits matter more to the company than its reputation among the scientific community. It is unlikely that the editorial team of The Lancet will be able to change Reed Elsevier’s behaviour alone. The wider scientific community that it relies on to make those profits, however, can form a powerful lobby.”

[ends]

Reed-Elsevier’s hypocrisy in selling arms and health [PDF 37k]

Notes:

Richard Smith worked for the BMJ for 25 years. He was Editor of the BMJ and Chief Executive of the BMJ Publishing Group from 1991 to 2004. Dr Smith is now Chief Executive of United Healthcare Europe.

‘Reed-Elsevier’s hypocrisy in selling arms and health’ by R Smith is published in the March 2007 issue (Vol. 100) of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

JRSM is the flagship journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. It has been published continuously since 1809. Its Editor is Dr Kamran Abbasi.

A copy of the article is available free at www.jrsm.org.uk

APA manual

FYI -- The bound copy of the APA manual at Ready Ref. is falling apart and has been sent to the bindery. The other bound copy in Reference stacks has also gone to the bindery for the same reason. There remains 1 paperback copy in Ready Ref. that seems to be holding up.

Reference desk staff assignment of hours

The assignment of hours for reference desk staff has been posted to the intra.

Subject/Research guides

I like the look of McGill's Research guides. Go to http://www.health.library.mcgill.ca/research/sguides/aboriginal.cfm to view.

Article about Google and Copyright in the New Yorker

There's a fascinating article about Google and Copyright in the New Yorker at http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070205fa_fact_toobin.

Nighttime Ref Desk Procedures

Just a reminder from the Reference Working Group - When closing up the Reference Desk at the end of the day please put the phone handset in the 3rd drawer of the Ref desk (the one that gets locked at night) and unplug the phone so that it doesn't ring when no librarians are scheduled to be on the desk. First person on the Ref desk in the morning is to replug the phone and replace the handset. Thanks! Rebecca (on behalf of the Reference Working Group).

Temporary move of selected Anthropology Reference materials

This week I will be teaching a number of Anthropology 250 labs in room 130 - part of the assignment is on how to use a reference source. There are about 50 reference titles that have been moved from Reference to a book truck that will sit in room 130 from Tuesday January 23rd until Friday January 26th . There will be a ‘Do Not Remove’ sign on the truck.

Please contact Lynne S. if you have any questions.
Thanks!

Study Room booking across campus

Students can book classrooms around campus for group study:

http://registrar.uvic.ca/undergrad/scheduling/sche/StudyGroups.html

The procedure is a bit involved, though - students have to complete several steps of permissions, agree to the study room use policy, etc.

This was news to me... Our rooms are too 'squishy' with more than 4 or 5 people, I am told.

tina

Death of VHS

After a long illness, the groundbreaking home-entertainment format VHS has
died of natural causes. The format was 30 years old.

Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117953955.html?c=20

binding list

Kathy Mercer dropped off a new binding list at the Ref Desk today. The database they were using has been resurrected!

Research Guides

I found this wonderful article on the usefulness of Research Guides - basically the authors suggest that a more subject-focussed approach is more useful than a general one ... apparently "students do not relate well to broad subject guides."

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/v004/4.1reeb.pdf

Audio / Video Equipment

The staff downstairs have received several emails asking about borrowing audio and video equipment. In case you get this question at the desk, the library only loans CD's, videos and DVD's. If a student wants to borrow Audio Visual equipment then they must contact Audio Visual Services in C051 Clearihue
http://web.uvic.ca/av/. Also there is a fee attached to this service.

Bill

SLAIS Student

Patsy Scott, a student at SLAIS, will be coming to observe at our Reference Desk this Friday, Nov. 24, from 2-3 p.m.

Please welcome Patsy and provide her with support as she completes this SLAIS assignment.

Thanks!

New phone & chair

The new phone and chair have arrived. You will no doubt notice these when you're at the desk. As this is Saturday, I have no one to ask for more information about either - I think the chair is pretty self-explanatory, but I'm hoping somewhere there might be documentation for the phone. Does anyone have this?

UK version of PubMed Central is moving ahead

"Scientists will be able to access a vast collection of biomedical research at the touch of a button thanks to a major new initiative that aims to promote the free transfer of ideas in a bid to speed up scientific discovery. Based on a model currently used in the United States, UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) will provide free access to an online digital archive of peer-reviewed research papers in the medical and life sciences.

UKPMC will ensure that the digital archive of published articles resulting from research paid for by any of the funding consortium will be freely available, fully searchable and extensively linked to other online resources." For more details see http://www.bl.uk/news/2006/pressrelease20060731a.html

University of Chicago Press changes policy regarding classroom use

From Elena's serials blog - great news!
For Immediate Release: October 31, 2006

Contact: Suzanne Wu / 773-834-0386 / swu@press.uchicago.edu

University of Chicago Press changes policy regarding
classroom use

In an effort to support educational use of the latest scholarly research, the
University of Chicago Press has amended its policy regarding course packets and electronic reserve of journal materials published by the University of Chicago Press.

Beginning on January 1, 2007, educators at institutions with Enterprise-Wide
access may make multiple hard copies of journal content for the purpose of
classroom use. An extension of the Enterprise-wide benefit of simultaneous
access, materials published electronically by the University of Chicago Press,
Journals Division may also be placed on e-reserve by members of institutions
with unlimited concurrency Enterprise-Wide subscriptions.

All other copying for classroom and educational use beyond the fair-use
provisions of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of the U.S. requires written
permission from the University of Chicago Press.

For more information, please refer to the updated University of Chicago Press
Journals Terms and Conditions at www.journals.uchicago.edu/license.html.

Posted by Elena Romaniuk at November 1, 2006 05:57 AM

UVic's Univ of Chicago press journals

American journal of education.
American journal of human genetics.
American journal of sociology.
American journal of sociology.
American naturalist.
Astronomical journal.
Astrophysical journal.
Astrophysical journal. Supplement series.
Classical philology.
Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Comparative education review.
Critical inquiry.
Current anthropology.
The elementary school journal.
Ethics.
History of religions.
International journal of American linguistics.
International journal of plant sciences.
Isis.
Journal of British studies.
The Journal of business.
The Journal of business.
Journal of geology.
Journal of infectious diseases.
Journal of labor economics.
Journal of law and economics.
Journal of modern history.
Journal of Near Eastern studies.
Journal of political economy.
Journal of political economy.
Journal of political economy.
Journal of religion.
Modern philology.
Philosophy of science.
Physiological and biochemical zoology.
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
Quarterly review of biology.
Signs.
Winterthur portfolio.

Forwarding the phone

Today, Ophelia and I discovered that forwarding the phone isn't always as straightforward as it seems. When you go to forward the phone, press # and then press 1. You should get a long dial tone. If so, enter your 4-digit local and hang up.

If you press # and then press 1 and you hear a series of beeps, hang up and start over. I'm not sure why this is happening, but the series of beeps interferes with the call forwarding activation. If I find out more I'll let you know.

Thanks! -- Tracie

Duplex printing

Hi all -- just a reminder from the Curric Lab staff that there will be duplex printing over here very soon (to go along with all duplex printing that's being rolled out on campus). They just wanted me to let you know.

Also, for those of you who don't know, the Curric Lab doesn't use the libraries copiers anymore, so students who want to do printing and photocopying in the Lab need to have the bigger green and white card that's used in other labs.

T.

Virtual ref article

Lupien, Pascal." Virtual Reference in the Age of Pop-Up Blockers, Firewalls,
and Service Pack 2" ONLINE Magazine 30(4)(July/August
2006)(http://www.infotoday.com/online/jul06/Lupien.shtml). - In this cover
story, Lupien identifies a "minefield of obstacles" to providing virtual
reference services with full-featured commercial virtual reference software.
Such applications can provide a sophisticated interaction with the library
user, including such things as screen sharing and co-browsing, but this high
level of interaction comes at a price. The full cost of this type of
interaction is identified here, with such problems as pop-up blockers, users
sequestered behind firewalls, and operating system upgrades getting in the
way. All of this Lupien uses as an introduction to Instant Messaging (IM) as
a possible substitute or replacement, while acknowledging that it provides
many fewer features for both the user and the library. - RT

Librarian Training on ICA matters

The ICA staff will provide the librarians with a one hour training session on ICA related issues tomorrow (Tuesday, August 15th) from 1:30 to 2:30 in room 130. Another session is scheduled for September if you can't make this one. If you would like more information, please contact Lynne S. Thanks and hope everyone can make it!

Pamphlet stand

The pamphlet stand has been moved to the wall across from the desk so that a sign advertising the ICA's (printer help) could be put in its place.

CALL SLIP in OPAC

A message from Chris Smith (from the Access Blog) about call slips:

Hi all,
This is an exciting day!
We have eliminated the option to place Call Slips from OPAC – something that has been a long-standing unnecessary annoyance. Call slip functionality in the Circ module has not been affected and still works the same as ever.
Huge thanks to Nancy for her invaluable help!
If anyone has questions, feel free to ask.
Cheers, Chris

Collections - books related to China

I just learned from Tad that any of us can use the CKOO fund to purchase anything in our own collection area(s) related to China. Tad says that we don't have to ask him to use this fund. Since I didn't know about this i'm posting this on the blog in case other librarians also didn't know this. Thanks, Tad!

National Network of Libraries for Health

Just wanted you to know that the Canadian Health Libraries Association has, for over 6 years, been aiming to create a National Network of Libraries for Health much like the U.S. National Library of Medicine's National Network of Libraries of Medicine. In today's CMAJ there's a great editorial by Sir Muir Gray about the concept at http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/175/2/129?etoc.

PHONE CHECK!

Please please please remember to check the Ref Desk phone for messages! There is no blinky light at the moment, so please call the message service and make sure there are no messages!

I was returning calls from SATURDAY morning and beyond, at 9 am today - needless to say there were some irate patrons waiting for a callback. Some of these people had already reached a librarian by phone, but I had no way to know that...

Thanks so much!
Tina

Missing books in ref collection

If you don't find books in the reference section that are meant to be there (using Danielle's wonderful shelf list), you can check to see if they were misplaced in Main or BCS ... failing that, please submit your list of missing REF titles to Maureen Becker or Amanda Watson in Access - I just spoke with Maureen and she'll be happy to add those to the list of items in Trace. You can send them as filled out blue slips, or as a list. If the books are found, they can then be weeded or refiled as appropriate. If they are not found, after a period of time, they'll become officially lost and dealt with as such.

Better than having undesirable material floating around the library, I think. I'm coming across a number of missing REF items and I just wasn't sure what to do about them - now we know!

Colour Copier/Printer

From Chris Smith...

Hi all,

As you'll no doubt soon be aware, we have relocated the colour copier/printer to the corner print station in the IC. There is a sign posted in the old location letting people know, but in case someone's looking for it...

Also, we have added another Cash Card Manager (machine for adding money to vend cards) to the main floor. It is located by the main print station in the IC, and should be more convenient for printer users.

Please let me know if there are any concerns.

New link in OVID Medline

I've had Lisa add an "Ask a Librarian" link to OVID Medline's interface. If a user clicks on the "Ask a Librarian" link they will be emailing me their question. I hope that's okay with everyone.

Statistics Canada Training Session - Tuesday May 30, McPherson Library Rm 130

The University of Victoria Libraries is hosting a morning workshop on Statistics Canada resources. The workshop will be conducted by Marion Smith, trainer from the Statistics Canada Vancouver office.

The workshop will run from 9:00 am to 12:30 pm and will be held in the McPherson Library classroom, Room 130. The last hour will be devoted to questions from attendees.

The final hour of the workshop will be devoted to “Question Search” This is where you get to have answered by the trainer your reference question. The trainer, Marion, has requested these be sent to her in advance so she can work through the answers prior to the workshop.

Please post your questions on the Ref Blog if you have access to it (if not, send directly to me). Then we can all see them. I will compile those submitted and send to Marion. Please submit you questions by the end of work, Tuesday March 16th.

If you plan on attending, please RSVP to Caron Rollins by Wednesday May 24, 2006

Invitations will also be extended to UVic Tech Services Librarians, and librarians from Royal Roads, GVPL, and Camosun.

Caron Rollins

Content to be covered:

E-STAT :

Using "Search CANSIM"
CANSIM Table Directory
CANSIM tables and the CHASS vector numbers
What's under the Articles tab (eg. article sources)
What's under the Data tab (CANSIM vs Census)
Hidden gems (Human Activity and the Environment)
Census data, mapping and graphing
Output choices
CENSUS:

What's the difference between a census Profile, a Highlight Table, and a Topic-based Tabulation?
Search by Topic
Maps
Reference materials: Census Dictionary, Handbook, Illustrated Glossary
Animated files (eg. population pyramids
QUESTION Search:

Curric Recalls

From the Curric Lab staff - just in case you have any inquiries at the desk:

1) As of today, April 11 and until June 6, patrons will be unable to recall Curric items. They may ask staff to place holds for them instead. If patrons have further questions they can talk to a Curric Lab staff member.

2) Our Practicum Loan begins April 18. From then until May 30, Curric items will be due June 13th. This is for UNDERGRADS ONLY. All other Curric borrowers will continue with their 28-day loan.

If anyone has questions, contact Marthese Cassar (cassarm@uvic.ca), or phone 721-7900.

Thanks! -- Tracie

Ref Desk Schedule still in flux

Please be advised that the Reference Desk schedule is still in draft form.

It's probably best to resist entering the dates into your calendars and Corporate Time until the scheduling dust has settled - I'm still hearing about vacation and away times from some folks, and am updating the schedule daily.

We should have a more solid version by next week.

Thanks!

Print vs Electronic Encyclopedias

Interesting discussion from PAM list...
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2006 12:52 PM
To: PAMNET@listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Q's and musings re encyclopedias

Hello everyone,

I've been working on buying our reference materials recently and have
questions about encyclopedias. Specifically, I'm considering buying either
the Water Encyclopedia (WE) or the Encyclopedia of Hydrological Sciences
(EHS), both by Wiley and both published in 2005, with online versions.

Now, I'm wondering what the difference is between the two, wondering if
there's duplication, and wondering why both were published at the same
time. No way can we afford both, even though water is a major subject here
in the arid southwest. Although it's snowing here in Abq this morning!

I didn't find any reviews of the two. Has anyone else out there bought
these? Any recommendations? If you have colleagues that deal in this
subject, I would appreciate it if you would pass my query on to them.

Then I wonder why even buy these at all? I know our encyclopedias get very
little use here in the library. I've persevered with the Enc of Astronomy
and Astrophysics online, mostly because I want this one to succeed, and it
does get use, although if I calculated a cost per use I might not be too
happy. :-) We did drop the online sub to its sister work, the Enc of Life
Sciences (which was published in the beginning by the same publisher and
came out more or less at the same time). I've considered the argument that
a large research library has an obligation (though that may be too strong
a word) to collect such a body of knowledge and keep it for the future.
And we are the biggest research library in NM. But it's such a lot of
money that might be put to better use.

Anyway, I'll appreciate people's thoughts on these weighty matters.

Donna Cromer
University of New Mexico

ANSWERS!
From: "A. Ben Wagner"
Subject: Re: Q's and musings re encyclopedias
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

I can't speak for our entire staff of 10 libraries, but I am taking a
harder and harder look at print encyclopedias and handbooks for the
following reasons:

1) print reference gets used less every year (it may be regrettable, but I
doubt we can do much to reverse that trend). Student goes with Wikipedia,
Google, etc. for background/overview material. I consider it a victory if
I can get them to realize that literature research for grant work, serious
research and publication work, and theses really need to go beyond the
general web.

2) I am focusing on buying a select few major encyclopedias covering major
areas and pretty much ignoring the scores of specialty encyclopedias. A
good example is the Encycl. of Analytical Chemistry by Wiley, a massive,
beautiful, and expensive 15-vol. work. But between that source and the
Internet, I see no compelling reason to buy an encyclopedia for any and
every specific technique (and no doubt there is one available for every
single method!). I don't pretend to speak for everyone (or even a
majority), but at this point I wouldn't buy any encyclopedia covering
something as focused as hydrology.

3) If you can't beat them, join them. I have pretty much decided we are at
a tipping point where the demand and expectation for 24x7 e-resources is
such among my patrons, that I am better off buying far fewer reference
sources, but ponying up the money to make them e-access site-wide. It's a
bit painful, but I would rather have 5 e-ref sources used weekly than 100
print sources gathering dust on the shelves.

Increasingly the print reference collection is the exclusive preserve of
the librarian, not the patron. To some extent that has always been the
case. We have always been the guide dogs to the reference shelves. The
only difference in the new e-age is that a large percentage of students
never make it to a physical reference desk any more.

-- A. Ben Wagner
Sciences Librarian
University at Buffalo
The State University of New York

Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:45:54 -0500
From: Michael Noga
Subject: Re: Q's and musings re encyclopedias
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Greetings,

Our earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences library has the Water
Encyclopedia. It's a compendium of tables on surface and ground water,
environmental problems, and other water-related topics. Most of the sources
come from government agencies, particularly the USGS and EPA. I think that
someone nominated it for the Best Geoscience Reference Work when I was on
the Geoscience Information Society committee that gives out the award. Our
copy doesn't circulate, but it physically shows some use.

We have not purchased the other hydrological encyclopedia.

We try to purchase electronic access to encyclopedias. We get the
Encyclopedia of Life Sciences online, and it is used by undergraduates in
biology classes. I had several requests for the Treatise on Geochemistry
online, so I bought it several months before considering picking up a print
copy.

We have put several print encyclopedias into the circulating stacks so that
users could treat them more as review articles than reference works. I tend
to wait a while to buy encyclopedias, because I could better use the money
for several monographs, particularly anything on computational methods.

Michael

------------------------
Michael Mark Noga
Collection Manager
MIT Science Library

Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 13:29:47 -0700
From: "Reichardt, Randy"
Subject: Re: Q's and musings re encyclopedias
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Like others, we have moved away from print to electronic wherever
possible. Some users, mostly undergrads, continue to make some use of
encyclopedias and handbooks in hard copy, but the numbers are going
down. When a new encyclopedia appears and is only available in hard
copy, we tend to either ignore it or wait/lobby for an e-version.

- Randy

Randy Reichardt
Research Services Librarian (Engineering)
Science & Technology Library v: 780.492.7911
1-26G Cameron f: 780.492.2721
University of Alberta Edmonton AB Canada
T6G 2J8 randy.reichardt@ualberta.ca

Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 16:49:50 -0500
From: Brian Simboli
Subject: Re: Q's and musings re encyclopedias
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

A. Ben Wagner's comments below are (as usual) well articulated and on
the mark.

We have a reference collection committee that is starting to define
policies about collecting reference books. I surfed the web the other
day trying to find examples of detailed collecting policies in this area
but did not come up with very much.

Perhaps some of you have in-house, formally defined reference book
policies that you would be willing to post to the listserv?

Clearly, subject coverage of the kind that print encyclopedias provide
(or used to provide) is necessary for us to provide to library users in
some way or another. Given that they are so expensive and yet unused, I
think we may find it necessary to find a surrogate in *circulating*
monographs of kind that give reviews of a field. Or, in low cost
encyclopedias. Re. the latter, there may be good grounds for letting
them circulate but with a shorter circ period than the usual monograph.

Plus we need to do a good job in directing patrons toward review
articles in the journal literature using whatever special indexing
dbases provide to do this.

It is unfortunate that all the craft associated with using print
reference resources, many of which are indeed works of art, is now
going by the wayside in this Age of Google. On the other hand, perhaps
I'll be barraged with fewer adverts about print encyclopedias that it
would be impossible for us to buy.

Brian Simboli

Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 19:58:15 -0500
From: Brian Gray
Subject: Re: Q's and musings re encyclopedias
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

How are people dealing with the downside of purchasing a print
encyclopedia with a one-time costs versus e-resources with re-occuring
fees? Have your budgets seen increases for these e-resources, or do you
find instead of purchasing several print encyclopedias in a year you
purchase one excellent electronic resource? What are the strategies you
are using?

Brian C. Gray, MLIS
Librarian - Engineering, Math, & Statistics
Email: brian.c.gray@case.edu
Blog: http://blog.case.edu/bcg8/
Kelvin Smith Library 201-H or Nord Hall 507/508

Case Western Reserve University

Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 20:44:16 -0500
From: "Matthew R. Marsteller"
Subject: Re: Q's and musings re encyclopedias
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Lucky for us we had a small amount of subscription funds available for
reference materials, but we had other money for reference materials that we
used to use for one time print purchases. Thankfully, I think you'll find
many publishers are starting one time purchase prices for digital reference
works. Those are working in our budget, but we don't have a lot to spend.
Similar to other libraries, we're going after the encyclopedias for broad
subject areas and then we're being VERY selective with the more focused
stuff. It has to really meet one of our research focus areas.

We don't have a good way of indicating what we have other than our catalog
at this point. I'd be interested in seeing what others are doing beyond the
catalog ... anyone putting anything in the old reference room to guide
people online?

It will be interesting to see what kind of usage this stuff gets.

Matt Marsteller

Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 21:20:23 -0500
From: Brian Gray
Subject: Re: Q's and musings re encyclopedias
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Here is how we share the electronic resources:
http://library.case.edu/ksl/research/eresources.html. May of the
reference materials are listed both under "eBooks" and in the "Research
Databases".

In the corporate library I was in previously, we had many reference
books that were also in Knovel when we added it. We created a sticker
that was placed on the spines of the older print books, thus sending
people to Knovel.com for the most current electronic version.

Brian C. Gray, MLIS
Librarian - Engineering, Math, & Statistics
Email: brian.c.gray@case.edu
Blog: http://blog.case.edu/bcg8/
Kelvin Smith Library 201-H or Nord Hall 507/508

Case Western Reserve University

Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 18:02:31 -0800
From: Karen Andrews
Subject: Re: Q's and musings re encyclopedias
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Hi, Brian,

Recently, I purchased some Dekker (now Taylor & Francis) print
encyclopedias because we had "one-time" monies. Like others, we
hesitate to buy print because it's hard to get students to come in to
use them, but we also hesitate with electronic at times because
students don't know they exist and we can't be sure of ongoing funds
to maintain access. The Dekker encyclopedias online had a license
clause that further restricted access to "the duration of the edition",
so we figured we were better off with print.

Imagine our dismay when the print encyclopedias arrived and we
discovered the following. Below many of the illustrations was a note
referring researchers to the online edition for the color version of
the illustration! I couldn't find any evidence that this "feature"
was advertised beforehand.

I understand that T&F are now considering offering improved licensing
options for their online encyclopedias, but I haven't seen actual copy
yet.

If resources already have name recognition among students, it may be
easier to get them to find and use the electronic encyclopedias. But
for fairly new titles that seem to be compilations of articles on a
topic, we find it difficult to promote these beyond a link from the catalog
and subject guides on our web pages.

Cheers,
Karen

Karen L. Andrews Phone: 530-752-1627
Head, Physical Sciences & Engineering Library Fax: 530-752-4719
University of California, Davis Email: klandrews@ucdavis.edu
One Shields Av.
Davis, CA 95616

Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 19:13:37 -0800
From: Martha Tucker
Subject: Re: Q's and musings re encyclopedias
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Then there is the publisher who is asking 2.5 times as much for the online
version of an upcoming encyclopedia (plus annual fee) as the print? What's
the reasoning behind that? How does one possibly justify buying that?

The UW has recently set aside some money to fund annual fees.

Martha Tucker
Math Research Library
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-4350

New journal: Evidence based library & information practice

"We are pleased to announce the release of the first issue of the new journal Evidence Based Library and Information Practice. EBLIP is open access, peer reviewed and is the first journal to focus specifically on evidence based practice in the information professions.

In addition to the valuable Evidence Summaries section, this issue also contains research articles, papers presented at the 3rd EBL Conference in Australia, and EBL Conference abstracts. " The journal can be accessed at http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP.

CMAJ saga continues...

The CMAJ saga continues to simmer and today's Globe and Mail has a story on it. It starts as:

Medical journal board rejects CMA plan
GLORIA GALLOWAY

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

OTTAWA — The editorial board of Canada's pre-eminent medical journal has rejected a plan offered by the Canadian Medical Association for assuring the journal's continued credibility, saying the CMA is merely trying to retain its ability to meddle with editorial content.

Full story at http://www.theglobeandmail.com

Interpreter for deaf students

I had a deaf student at the desk today, with an interpreter from the Resource Centre for Students with a Disability. The interpreter (Kristi Falconer - Interpreter Coordinator) left her cards at the desk in case we have other students needing the services of an interpreter for the hearing-impaired. I'll leave the cards are in the top drawer.

more added to Google & Google Scholar

JSTOR Crawl Site Update

"As was announced in December, JSTOR has released a new crawl site to enable search engines to index the scholarly literature in the archive. This crawl site is available to public search engines who sign a license agreement with JSTOR and contains the full-text or optical character recognition (OCR) files for the majority of journals participating in JSTOR.

Our first crawl site partner is Google. Google participated in a pilot with JSTOR to develop the crawl site during 2005. Now, more than 2 million of the full-length articles and book reviews archived by JSTOR are searchable in both Google and Google Scholar. We look forward to indexing and making searchable an increased amount of material as the scope of the project and the number of crawl site partners expand.

We are delighted to be able to offer resource discovery tools and pathways to the material in JSTOR. Our aim is to facilitate research and teaching by increasing access to scholarly literature as widely as possible. We hope to welcome additional crawl site partners later this year."

From JSTOR Update 28 February 2006.

"Google Scholar Rivals Web of Science" UBC Prof says

""Google Scholar Rivals Web of Science" - UBC Prof Says

http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/googlescholar/

It's axiomatic that databases bought by university libraries - like ISI's Web of Science (WoS) - outperform free search tools like Google Scholar. Or is it? A recent study co-authored by Daniel Pauly, director of the UBC Fisheries Centre suggests otherwise; the study compared WoS with Google Scholar, with some surprising results." (from Dean Giustini's Google Scholar Blog)

Sending PDFs at the Ref Desk

Further to my blog posting on January 5/06, I often still find e-mails from the previous day (or earlier) in the Outlook outbox when I work at the desk. After talking to several people, it is clear to me that not everyone understands why Outlook needs to be opened, or remembers to do it. I previously suggested that we keep Outlook open all the time, but the constant IMAP time-out messages that pop up are simply too annoying! The help desk has looked into this, but can't seem to fix it. My other suggestion was to open up Outlook briefly after sending e-mails, but I realize that this is hard to remember, especially when it is busy at the desk.

I don't want to harp about this, but I feel that it's REALLY important that patrons get articles that we send to them promptly. It may be a better idea if we saved the PDF to the desktop, opened up our webmail, and sent the attachments using webmail. Liz pointed out to me that patrons using the IC terminals have to send themselves attachments this way anyway, so we might as well show them a method that will work when they are working by themselves in the library. If you have any questions, please come ask me, and I'd be happy to clarify and/or demonstrate. As always, comments and suggestions are muchly appreciated!

CMAJ fires 2 editors!

FYI - Canadian Medical Association Journal fires 2 editors. See CBC News:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2006/02/21/cmaj060221.html?print

Google's newsletter for librarians - 2d issue now available

The 2nd issue of "Google's newsletter for librarians" is now available at: http://www.google.com/newsletter/librarian/librarian_2006_01/article1.html

You can also subscribe to receive this newsletter here - http://www.google.com/services/librarian_center.html

Confusions with ILL

I have a message from Nancy Stuart that ILL is changing their procedures to try to educate our users about when to order directly rather than through ILL. The problem is that they often get ILL requests that could more easily have been ordered directly from the supplying library. What they will do is:

When a patron requests something through ILL that should have been ordered directly, they will fill the order but will attach a yellow note to the item when it comes in. The note will read:

"Please note: You could have ordered this item by sending a Direct Request to the supplying library. This is a faster and more economical service. To obtain more information on Direct Requesting, please ask at the Reference Desk."

Nancy is also rewriting the ILL FAQs to include: 1) What is Direct Requesting? and 2) When should I forward my request to library staff?

I have asked Nancy to come to our February meeting to review this and other ILL procedures. In the meantime, please direct questions or comments directly to her.

We can now email PDFs from pcs at Ref. desk

The Help Desk has now enabled the three new pcs at the Ref. desk to email PDFs. Now we can email PDFs directly from the PDF itself.

Google Scholar article

From Current Cites...
Jacso, Peter."As We May Search - Comparison of Major Features of the Web =
of
Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar Citation-Based and Citation-Enhanced
Databases" Current Science 89(10)(25 November 2005):1537-1547.
(http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/nov102005/1537.pdf). - Announced to wide
acclaim a year ago, Google Scholar remains a bit of an enigma. The =
scholarly
search service provides little or no information that can be used to
evaluate it as an information source, and therefore people such as the
author of this article are left to do the best they can to determine the
coverage of the service, its accuracy, and user options. Jacso has =
published
previous evaluations of Google Scholar, but this one is the most =
in-depth
review I've seen, and the comparison with similar commercial services is
also instructive. If you have read Jacso's earlier articles, his =
criticism
of Scholar will comes as no surprise. But anyone who is pointing users =
to
Scholar or who use it themselves would do well to read this article. - =
RT

Microsoft to digitize the world's libraries!

Those of you who follow Google Scholar and Google Print initiatives might find it interesting that Microsoft has recently joined the Open Content Alliance (OCA) and Yahoo to become a direct rival to Google in digitizing the world's libraries. MSN will launch MSN Book Search next year as result of the collaboration.

Unlike Google, Microsoft has made it clear from day one of its book digitization plans that it will work with copyright holders to legally scan titles that are still protected by copyright law.

The selection of this collection would be liaised by the University of California.

http://tinyurl.com/7sjxr
http://tinyurl.com/9bqt6

Library Research Survey - Draw Winners

Hi Everyone,

We have 5 prize winners for the Library Research Survey.

Their names are:

Erin Keating
Becky de Groot
Claire Jean
Brad Madiuk
Kyle Denomme

They have all been informed by email this morning of which prizes they have won and I've asked them to let me know when they are coming to pick up their prizes.

If you have any questions about this let me know.

Inba

Ref Desk closing procedure

I'd just like to reinforce that we don't need to turn off the ref desk terminals, nor lock all 4 drawers when closing at night (these have been done sporadically over the past year and are pet peeves of mine). Here's a quote from the Ref Desk Closing page at http://gateway.uvic.ca/intra/units/reference/policies/refdesk_opening_closing.html
"1. Click on the blue Apple icon in the top left corner of the computer screen, then ***LOG OUT***, NOT log off (do not shut down the computer).
2. Remove the keyboards, and lock them in the third drawer at the reference desk. Leave the other drawers unlocked."

It's (1) slower to open the desk if you have to reboot the computers, and I think (2) especially the bottom drawer should never be locked since it contains the emergency supplies, which should be quickly accessible.
Please excuse my rant (just being a little compulsive this morning and too much free time) ... I wasn't sure if people were aware of these guidelines.

Firefox and PDF's

Does anyone know how to make PDF files open not in Preview mode, but rather as the full document in Acrobat while using Firefox browser? The preview that comes up is too small to read the text and also won't allow you to "Find" words within the document (as you can do in the full acrobat reader version).

Societies of Europe

I've asked that the CDs from the Reference books, "Societies of Europe, the European Population..." be put on CD rom station 4 - they contain all the data sets and stats, in handy Excel or downloadable format, for both volumes of the book.

I've been advised that this could take a couple of weeks.

If you ever need demographics or certain other statistics about Europe, as a whole or specific countries, these books are amazing - the CDs will allow users to view the entire tables, make their own tables, using Excel or various stats softwares.

Of course the books are useful too, dated 2005: REF HB3581 A3R684

Copyright Law

Michael Geist has just published an anthology on the future of Canadian copyright law, with contributions by 19 Canadian copyright experts - including Margaret Ann Wilkinson who did a standing room only CE session on copyright and libraries at this year's CHLA/ABSC conference.

You can buy the traditional book for about 50 bucks, or download it for free under a Creative Commons license. All the royalties from the print edition are to be donated to Creative Commons.

Geist's website at http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

Check out the book - as much as you want - at http://www.irwinlaw.com/books.cfm?pub_id=120&series_id=3

Thesis for Mediated Use in Library

ILL has dropped a "Rush Request" thesis off which can be used in the library only. The user's name and library card number is on the item. The user must leave "significant personal ID" in exchange for borrowing the thesis to use in the library.

If you have any other questions you can contact Amanda Watson at Ext. 8225. When the user is finished with the thesis someone can contact Kathy Mercer in Technical Services at Ext. 8245. (All this information is also on the item.)

I have made the decision to keep it in the locked keyboard drawer.

Requests to use Classroom 130 for non-library sessions

I had a request today from a Biology TA who wanted to book Classroom 130 for a lab session on Sunday. Apparently, the computer lab in the biology building was closed recently. I checked with Jo, and she says that unless the session is library-related, and the librarian is present to teach something, then 130 is not available to be booked.

We found a website from the Computing User Services Student Facilities Group with info on computing facilities on campus that can be booked: http://www.sfg.uvic.ca/facilities.htm. Clearihue has 7 computer labs available to be booked; I can't tell if the labs in Business or HSD can be booked or not. I called Marc Thoma, who is the Facility Coordinator for the Clearihue labs (mthoma@uvic.ca, 472-4282), and he told me that these labs are available everyday, even on the weekends. So... if you have an instructor who contacts you to book Classroom 130 for a non-library session, please direct them to the SFG website.

Room assignments for continuing education courses

I worked on the Ref. desk last night and someone asked me for the room no. of a continuing education course that they were taking. They didn't have their course receipt with them so I looked in the continuing education catalogue and on the UVic main & continuing education webpages but found no room numbers listed. I emailed Continuing Studies and here is the answer they sent me:

"I know that the course locations are really hard to find and that they are not posted anywhere on the main campus or Continuing Studies sites. This is pretty frustrating I realize, for anyone who doesn’t have access to SRS, which is our version of ISIS over here in UNEX. Please encourage students who are concerned about their course locations to contact us at 472-4747 or via email at register@uvcs.uvic.ca . Most of the locations are included on the receipts that all of our students receive in the mail when they register. Those that are not… sometimes are not even announced to us until much closer to the date as so many factors go into making a particular location possible.

I know that this doesn’t help you much, but hopefully gives you something to tell the students when they come in. If they do not see a location on their receipt, again, do encourage them to call us as more than likely a location has not been announced or was not at the time of mailing."

Unfortunately, this isn't very helpful as noone is at the phone number they suggest we phone in the evenings.

Just wanted you to know...

Brochures for Wireless Access

This may be old news for some, but I just discovered today that we have some brochures in the stand next to the reference desk on how to connect to UVic's wireless network. This could be a useful reference for patrons who aren't sure how to configure their laptop for wireless.

C.E. opportunities

"The Partnership", the collaborative educational initiative of the various Canadian provinical library associations, is offering a number of teleconferences and on-line courses that may be of relevance and interest to you. Offerings over the next few months include "Finding and using consumer health and medical resources on the web" with Susan Murray, Rita Vine's "Beyond Google" course, updates on copyright reform, and many others. For a complete listing go to:

http://www.thepartnership.ca/cgi-bin/site/showPage.cgi?page=education/calendar.html

history assignment and PEEPS!

I've placed a copy of the HIST 105 assignment in the binder on the desk - it's very straightforward, compare primary accounts with secondary accounts of an event. Use the London Times index when there isn't one for a Canadian newspaper.. no, we don't have any German newspapers from that period in English. It's all dealing with the two wars, interwar and postwar periods, so use that Time Period limiter inHistorical abstracts... they've had a session, they might remember that!

ALso, check out this bit of brilliant instruction: PEEPS go to the library!
http://www.millikin.edu/staley/fluff/peep_research.html It's inspired, and fun.

I saw Peeps learn about Science at the seattle children's museum last year - it was a huge draw.

Vending machines dispense books

I think this is a great idea!

"Readers craving Homer, Baudelaire or Lewis Carroll in the middle of the night can get a quick fix at one of the French capital's five newly installed book vending machines.

"We have customers who know exactly what they want and come at all hours to get it," said Xavier Chambon, president of Maxi-Livres, a low-cost publisher and book-store chain that debuted the vending machines in June. "It's as if our stores were open 24 hours a day."

Stocked with 25 of Maxi-Livres best-selling titles, the machines cover the gamut of literary genres and tastes. Classics like "The Odyssey" by Homer and Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" share the limited shelf space with such practical must haves as "100 Delicious Couscous" and "Verb Conjugations."

Regardless of whether they fall into the category of high culture or low, all books cost the equivalent of a modest @.45 (U.S.)" from the Globe & Mail, Saturday, Aug. 20/05 p. R3

3rd IC Printer

Sulin just came by and told me the new print station is ready for the IC. It is located in the far north east corner of the main floor - in the beautiful new IC area. It will ONLY print black and white print jobs. If someone choses the colour printer they need to access their job from the 2 print stations near the elevator.

Google Launches it's IM Service: Google Talk

Check out Google's new IM service, Google Talk. Not only does it do IM, it also offers voice chatting over the internet, like Skype.

Here's an article on CNET discussing Google Talk:
Google IM (almost) gets the message, users say.

New Research Guides for Biochemistry & Microbiology

Just in time for the start of the school year... the research guide that was formerly known as Biochemistry & Microbiology is now divided into two separate guides, Biochemistry and Microbiology. I will see about getting a banner on the Gateway about these and the Astronomy & Physics guides too.

New Research Guides for Astronomy & Physics

I have divided the research guide formerly known as Physics & Astronomy into two new research guides, Astronomy and Physics. I have also added more websites to the Online Resources sections - arXiv (the physics e-print archive) is now listed on both guides. On the Astronomy guide, check out The Nine Planets and Views of the Solar System websites - lots of neat pictures! On the Physics guide, Physics Central gives some very interesting overviews of contemporary physics... good for anyone who would like to get a better idea of what physics is all about.

Reference Librarian Orientation materials - updated!

I have been updating much of the RefWG's orientation materials for new librarians (formerly this was called "Limited Term Librarian Orientation" - now called "Reference Librarian Orientation"). Please look through the info at this page and let me know of any mistakes/changes/additions, preferably by the 26th so that I can make changes before our newest librarian starts.

The orientation pages are now also linked off the main Reference Services Intra page - there is a new section on the right for Training, and both the peer training page and the orientation info is linked there.

Cost Share form for Video Purchases now online

I have updated the Video / DVD purchase page for Faculty (http://gatewayx.uvic.ca/dept/access/mediapurchasing.html). The cost share form is now available as a PDF form and I have added more information about the process. So if instructors ask they can print this form.

Bill

Google books project on hold

Google pauses online books plan. Google has put the brakes on its programme to digitise the books in several major university libraries. In its blog, the search giant said it would temporarily stop scanning copyrighted texts until November to allay concerns about the plan.

The company's library project aims to put millions of volumes online and accessible everywhere via the web.

Google's plan has come under fire from several groups who object to what they say are violations of copyright.

Google is pumping $200m (£110m) into creating a digital archive of millions of books from four top US libraries - the libraries of Stanford, Michigan and Harvard universities, and of the New York Public Library - by 2015.

It is also digitising out-of-copyright books from the UK's Oxford University.

'Grave misgivings'

Google says the aim is to make the text of the world's books searchable by anyone in the world, especially when it comes to out of print and obscure texts.

Google's procedure shifts the responsibility for preventing infringement to the copyright owner rather than the user, turning every principle of copyright law on its ear
Patricia Schroeder, Association of American Publishers

"We think most publishers and authors will choose to participate in the publisher programme in order introduce their work to countless readers around the world," wrote Google Print's Adam Smith on the Google blog.
"But we know that not everyone agrees, and we want to do our best to respect their views too."

In an attempt to assuage concerns about copyright, Google has stopped scanning books which are in copyright until November.

The pause is designed to allow publishers to tell Google which books should not be included in the scanning programme.

But the changes do not seem to go far enough for leading publishers.

The trade body of the US publishing industry, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), said it still has "grave misgivings" about the project.

"Google's announcement does nothing to relieve the publishing industry's concerns," said AAP president Patricia Schroeder in a statement.

"Google's procedure shifts the responsibility for preventing infringement to the copyright owner rather than the user, turning every principle of copyright law on its ear," she added.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/4146488.stm

Published: 2005/08/12 15:21:07 GMT

Murray's Tables

I am looking for Murray's tables, which should be in Atlas Case A. There are only 12 pages (one per month), which were kept in a short, bright blue binder, call no. G1172 J825C878, next to the Current atlas, Juan de Fuca Strait... They are used as a temporal index to this atlas. We keep the latest 2 editions; the 2005 ed. was received in Acquisitions in November but I don't know if it reached the atlas cases. The 2004 ed. is also missing.

Minutes - May 31, 2005

Here are the minutes from the May 31st, 2005 Reference meeting.

Reference Meeting
May 31, 2005
Room 210 3:00 - 4:30 pm

Present: BB, HD, AF, JH (Chair), KH, IK, OM, KN, KP, DR, TrS, LS, LW

Summary:

1. Web Redesign Project – KP and AF

A small project team will be developed to assist KP and AF with the project. The team will:

- be chosen for their technical skills, ability to see the big picture and the ability to give time to the project
- identify key stakeholders and develop a process for getting feedback from stakeholders
- interface with UVic Portal people – e.g. the Portal content people want to know by mid-June what kind of real estate the library will need on the UVic Portal.

A project BLOG will be created as one avenue on communication.

2. Information Skills Workshop debriefing - IK

See related Reference Matters entry.

3. Statistics Canada Advisory Services Offices – KN

Katy discussed a letter from Ian McKeller, Director of Advisory Services, Statistics Canada, regarding Regional Advisory Services Offices. These offices are being closed and clients are being directed to a website and to depository libraries as of May 31.

4. Reference Statistics widget – KP

- the new widget is linked off the intranet pages and on all toolbars at the Reference Desk
- it was decided to start using the widget June 1
- paper will only be used if the widget is not working or someone has difficulty accessing it – we will not automatically keep stats in both places
- Maps reference stats should be kept as in-office so Lori will be able to know how many questions of the total are Maps questions
- other reference locations will be invited to use the widget once everything is working smoothly

Compiled by JH.

ISW 2005 Feedback

Here is a compilation of comments gathered from attendees at this year's Instructional Skills Workshop for Librarians hosted by the Learning and Teaching Centre.

Instructional Skills Workshop Debriefing
May 31, 2005
Room 210 3:00 – 4:30 pm

1) Program Recap

- Certified by C2T2
- 12 participants
- Large group session covered learning styles, teaching perspectives, and group dynamics.
- Small group sessions were used for practice, personal reflection, and peer evaluation.
- The workshop was customized for librarians, and for content covering group dynamics and peer evaluation.

2) General Overview

a. Feedback on the workshop
- intense
- emotional experience
- wasn’t prepared for it
- being judged
- back to being in a student environment
- lots of work
- positive team building experience
- bigger groups provided better sessions

b. Feedback on the facilitators
- interesting
- diverse
- skilled
- supportive
- encouraged us to take risks
- not sure if they knew about what librarians do

3) Value of Training/Personal Reflection

a. What were your learning objectives?
- learn to instruct in an effective way
- gain confidence and experience
- get feedback
- not had feedback lately from others
- learn how to give feedback
- get lots of practice
- see how others teach

b. What skills did you learn or were reminded of?
- BOPPPs structure
- to apply instructional skills at meetings, projects, life skillss
- feedback giving and getting
- to give and get feedback without making it personal
- to listen
- to use ‘I’ statements
- the experience of the learner
- we learned a lot about ourselves
- that colleagues value our skills and that we are diverse
- team building
- found out about colleagues interest
- techniques to apply: flip charts, colours, games, groups
- teaching styles: apprenticeship, social reform, nurturing, transference
- planning the lesson
- to manage time
- to focus
- learning styles: cognitive, psychomotor, affective

c. What was not included?
- use of computers when teaching to reflect what we do
- use of technology
- use of large (lecture) classroom – not given enough notice
- schedule didn’t provide enough time to prepare

d. What did you like that was not included/or would have like included?
- emphasis on keeping an open mind – participants didn’t want too much information before the workshop.
- come ready to learn
- wanted to focus on the experience
- participate don’t anticipate

e. What commitment(s) have you as learners made to work?
- to teach without technology
- try to use BOPPPs
- use more activities in class
- use more discovery activities in class
- use volunteers
- divide class into groups
- to get feedback from students about what was learnt
- to get feedback from colleagues – try to invite once, give feedback once
- to try to use team teaching – and get feedback from colleague
- videotape instruction session
- apply learned skills during peer teaching sessions

f. For the future
- more contact with Learning and Teaching Centre e.g. Course Redesign Clinics, etc.
- market course redesign clinics
- time management workshop
- communication workshop – to teach adult learners

Complied from flip chart comments by SR.

NYPL Digital Gallery

The New York Pulic Library has created the NYPL Digital Gallery, a free online gallery of 275,000 images from the library's collections. The searchable database includes prints, illuminated manuscripts, photographs, maps, postcards, menus, posters and other visual materials. The URL is:

digitalgallery.nypl.org

ICA Schedule

from Jo...
Hi Jo,
Just thought I'd let you know the plan for IC support next week, maybe you
can post it to the Ref blog.

Monday May 2 - Friday May 6: ICA on duty 11:00am - 3:00 pm
Beginning Saturday May 7 and continuing through summer session: ICA on duty
11:00am - closing

Cheers, Chris

Chris Smith
Access Services Supervisor

No ILL service from Alberta libraries April 21 - May 2

Karen Carter from ILLO sent me a message that the University of Alberta, University of Calgary, Lethbridge and Athabasca are all doing a system upgrade from April 21 to May 2. This means that they will not be able to fill ILL requests during that period - this is particularly important for U of Alberta, since they're usually our #1 choice.

Since Nancy Stuart is away this week, I'm not sure whether we'll be able to turn off the requesting in GODOT for U of A this week, although we will certainly try to. (It has already been turned off for U of Calgary.) So, if you're helping a patron at the desk, remember not to use Alberta for requests, or the person won't get their material till May!

The excitement of Google Scholar, the worry of Google Print

Here's a somewhat interesting commentary on Google Scholar and Google Print that you may be interested in: http://www.bio-diglib.com/content/pdf/1742-5581-2-2.pdf.

Cemetery Symbolism source

FYI, there's a new book in the latest batch of Ref titles called "Stories in stone" (Ref NB1800 K45) that will be very useful should the cemetery symbolism assignment come around again.

The ToC: FUNERARY ARCHITECTURE: DESIGNED FOR ETERNITY -- Chapter 1: Mausoleums, Chapels, Offices -- Chapter 2: Tombs, Sculptures, Memorials -- STONE RELICS: DESIGNED FOR REMEMBRANCE -- Chapter 3: Flora -- Chapter 4: Fauna -- Chapter 5: Human Mortality -- Chapter 6: Religious Devotion -- Chapter 7: Benevolent Societies -- Chapter 8: Final Impressions

Holy cow, they actually listened! 

Read The Distant Librarian blog entry on The Government of Canada Announces Upcoming Amendments to the Copyright Act.

What seems most amazing to me is:
The electronic interlibrary desktop delivery of certain copyright material, notably academic articles, directly to library patrons would be permitted, provided effective safeguards were in place to prevent misuse of the material.

Canada's Copyright Act proposal good, could be better

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/24/canadas_dmca_proposa.html

Everything you ever wanted to know about Canada's proposed Digital Millenium Copyright Act - this WILL impact us, so it's good to know about about what what's going to come. Canada's been wholly out of date for quite some time, so it's good news that they're proposing new legislation, and we've had time to learn from the US mistakes ...

Tina

Ergonomics of Ref desk

I have received some comments from Wendie McHenry that reference staff gave to the UVic occupational safety and health person when she was visiting the library last month. Staff were concerned about the ergonomics of using the computers at the Reference Desk. This is the first I have heard about this!! Certainly, the computers at the Reference desk are not set up for hours and hours of typing non stop with no breaks... Perhaps if people have specific concerns they could put them in writing and submit to me or Joanne? Maybe we can think about ways to work with our current equipment set up? All suggestions gratefully accepted.
thanks, katy

Open Access Bibliography

The Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly
Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals presents
over 1,300 selected English-language books, conference
papers (including some digital video presentations),
debates, editorials, e-prints, journal and magazine
articles, news articles, technical reports, and other
printed and electronic sources that are useful in
understanding the open access movement's efforts to provide
free access to and unfettered use of scholarly literature.
Most sources have been published between 1999 and August 31,
2004; however, a limited number of key sources published
prior to 1999 are also included. Where possible, links are
provided to sources that are freely available on the
Internet (approximately 78 percent of the bibliography's
references have such links).

http://info.lib.uh.edu/cwb/oab.pdf

This bibliography has been published as a printed book
(ISBN 1-59407-670-7) by the Association of Research Libraries
(ARL).

http://www.arl.org/pubscat/pubs/openaccess/

ARL and the author have made the above PDF version
of the bibliography freely available. It is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Key Open Access Concepts

1 General Works
1.1 Overviews
1.2 Analysis and Critiques
1.3 Debates and Dialogs
1.3.1 Nature Web Debate on Future E-Access to the Primary
Literature
1.3.2 Nature Web Focus on Access to the Literature: The
Debate Continues
1.3.3 Other
1.4 Research Studies
1.5 Other

2 Open Access Statements
2.1 Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the
Sciences and Humanities
2.2 Bethesda Statement on Open Access
2.3 Budapest Open Access Initiative
2.4 NEAR
2.5 OECD Final Communique
2.6 Tempe Principles
2.7 Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science
2.8 Wellcome Trust Position Statement and Research Reports
2.9 World Summit on the Information Society Declaration of
Principles and Plan of Action
2.10 Other

3 Copyright Arrangements for Self-Archiving and Use
3.1 General Works
3.2 Copyright Ownership and Rights
3.3 Creative Commons
3.4 Permissions Crisis
3.5 Research Studies

4 Open Access Journals
4.1 General Works
4.2 Economic Issues
4.2.1 General Works
4.2.2 BMJ Rapid Responses about "Author Pays" May Be the New
Science Publishing Model
4.3 Open Access Journal Change Agents
4.3.1 SPARC
4.4 Open Access Journal Publishers and Distributors
4.4.1 BioMed Central
4.4.2 Public Library of Science
4.4.3 PubMed Central
4.4.3.1 General Works
4.4.3.2 Science Magazine dEbate on "Building a GenBank of
the Published Literature"
4.4.3.3 Science Magazine dEbate on "Is a Government Archive
the Best Option?"
4.4.3.4 Science Magazine dEbate on "Just a Minute, Please"
4.4.3.5 Other
4.5 Specific Open Access Journals
4.5.1 Journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals
4.5.2 Pioneering Free E-Journals Not in the DOAJ
4.5.3 Other
4.6 Research Studies

5 E-Prints
5.1 General Works
5.2 History
5.3 Research Studies

6 Disciplinary Archives
6.1 General Works
6.2 Specific Archives and Projects
6.2.1 arXiv
6.2.2 NASA Astrophysics Data System
6.2.3 RePEc
6.2.4 Other

7 Institutional Archives and Repositories
7.1 General Works
7.2 E-Print Archives
7.2.1 General Works
7.2.2 Specific Archives and Projects
7.2.2.1 ePrints-UK
7.2.2.2 SHERPA
7.2.2.3 Other
7.3 Repositories with Diverse Materials
7.3.1 General Works
7.3.2 Specific Repositories and Projects
7.3.2.1 DAEDALUS
7.3.2.2 DSpace
7.3.2.3 eScholarship
7.3.2.4 Fedora
7.3.2.5 OSU Knowledge Bank
7.3.2.6 Other
7.4 Electronic Theses and Dissertations

8 Open Archives Initiative and OAI-PMH
8.1 General Works
8.2 Specific Data or Service Providers and Projects
8.2.1 AmericanSouth.org
8.2.2 Arc
8.2.3 Kepler
8.2.4 OAIster
8.2.5 OpCit
8.2.6 Open Archives Forum
8.2.7 Open Archives Initiative Metadata Harvesting Project
8.2.8 Other
8.3 Research Studies

9 Conventional Publisher Perspectives

10 Government Inquires and Legislation
10.1 European Commission Study
10.2 Sabo Bill
10.3 U.K. House of Commons Science and Technology Committee
Inquiry
10.4 U.S. House Appropriations Committee Recommendations
10.5 Other

11 Open Access Arrangements for Developing Countries
11.1 General Works
11.2 Free or Reduced Cost Access
11.2.1 AGORA
11.2.2 HINARI
11.2.3 Other
11.3 SciELO

RefWorks - IC Assistants

Hi,

Just wanted to let you know that all but 2 of the IC Assistants have now been trained to use RefWorks as well!

My Kingdom for an OPAC

A very interesting article by Andrew Pace in Feb 2005 American Libraries on OPAC development.

“And I have not found a patron who is satisfied with any answer as to why a web search engine can return relevant results from four billion full-text websites faster than an OPAC can return a randomly sorted hitlist from one million surrogate records;”

Rush cataloguing requests

This is a reminder from the Public Services Liason Group that rush cataloguing requests from students should be directed to the Loan Desk and not upstairs to acquisitions.

Google Scholar is a Full Year Late Indexing PubMed Content

Hi Everyone,
To read more on Google Scholar being almost a full year behind in indexing PubMed content go to http://www.workingfaster.com/sitelines/archives/2005_02.html#000282. For medical topics, at least, we shouldn't rely on Google Scholar but should always search PubMed or Ovid Medline.

popup windows in the IC

I learned something new today - the IC computers default to block popups, which shuts down Godot but also can make refworks exports not work. It can also affect lots of other applications - anything that opens a new browser window. If you encounter problems with either of these things, or the student tells you they are 'broken', try it again after turning pop-ups ON.

Sometimes you will get an error message that gives you the option to turn popups back on, and sometimes you get an 'information bar' (right under the address bar) that suggests you do so, (and if you right click on this bar, you can turn the popups on from there) and sometimes you get no notification whatsoever, and have to go into the browser preferences to do it.

I knew about the godot problem but did not know that it was the default setting for those computers. The lovely and talented IC assistant helped me through it, and then Ophelia sorted out the resulting Refworks problem. Yay teamwork!

Open Access in UK

There is an interesting article in today's Guardian Newspaper. "Academics fight to break 'stranglehold' on journals." Details at http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/sciences/story/0,12243,1398368,00.html
Rebecca

Pew Internet Survey on Search Engine Users

Very interesting...

Article from Search Engine Watch which discusses the PEW Internet Survey:
Survey: Searchers are Confident, Satisfied & Clueless

Pew Search Engine Users Survey

More re IMP

P.S. For access to BMJ journals and to Clinical Evidence through UBC we need to use 'ubc1' for both the username and the password.

test

here i am (it's me, rebecca!)

Google Will Digitize and Search Millions of Books From 5 Leading Research Libraries

By Peter Suber
Scott Carlson and Jeffrey Young, Google Will Digitize and Search Millions of Books From 5 Leading Research Libraries, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 14, 2004 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: 'Five of the world's largest libraries have joined Google in a Herculean effort to digitize millions of books and make every sentence searchable. The project, which Google officials plan to announce today, involves libraries at Harvard and Stanford Universities, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Oxford, as well as the New York Public Library. It could soon turn Google into the single largest holder of digitized published material, while also providing researchers and students with an unprecedented tool for finding information

More Google

Googlereviews.com has just been registered as a domain with google - speculation abounds, but the general consensus is that they'll incorporate all reviews into Froogle (the google shopping sites) - Will this have an impact on book sales? Stay tuned to find out...

Also check out google's mobile service: http://www.google.com/sms/ For the phone/PDA crowd.

Google's local services: http://local.google.com/ Next time someone asks you for a restaurant/coffeeshop/toystore/publicpark in the neighborhood, use local google. I'm hoping they call it Loogle.

testing email notification

This is a test message to see if netref-l@lists.uvic.ca will be notified about this message. Apologies in advance for this.

KP

RefWorks & Thesis workshop

Hi Everyone,

1. RefWorks
Just want to let you know that the RefWorks support pages have been updated further to include information on exporting/importing references by vendor and by database title. We have also added a guide for WebSpirs databases.

2. Thesis Template
Please feel free to send the following information to the grad students in your liaison areas.

COUS will be offering a thesis template workshop next month - December 10 from 10-12noon and 1-3pm.

Place: Room 130, Library Classroom

Description:
Getting Started with the UVic Thesis Template

Participants will learn about the styles provided in the thesis template and will learn how to apply styles, how to alter style definitions, how to create table of contents. Students are expected to bring or create their own example text. Participants will work on their own documents under the guidance of staff who will be available to answer questions, suggest strategy and collect suggestions for future versions of the template.

Please register for the workshop at:
http://gateway.uvic.ca/cgi-bin/WebObjects/eventspages.woa/1/wa/CalenderPage?target=Grads&dept=0

Gateway/WebOPAC proposed changes

The following changes are proposed to be implemented on the Gateway pages and in the WebOPAC on Jan. 3, 2005. The Gateway Working Group are asking for feedback by Nov. 29. Please send feedback to the Gateway Working Group chair, Nancy Stuart at nstuart@uvic.ca . The GWG will meet on Nov. 30 to discuss the feedback and finalize the changes.

1. There is a new "Other Libraries" page. We have added RedLightGreen in the "Other Libraries" section. Please take a look
Other Libraries page.

2. When you rest your mouse over "Research a Topic", we have added between
- By discipline and - Reference tools

- EndNote
- RefWorks
Gateway screenshot

3. Adrian added to each subject Research Guide a link to "About EndNote" and "About RefWorks".

4. Have the new GODOT interface implemented as discussed and demonstrated at the Reference Meeting of Oct. 19. See screen shots of the demo at
Godot screenshot

5. On the Gateway Homepage the link for "Is the journal title at UVic?" will now link to a new page that will do a GODOT search. This will allow users to find journal titles not only in our UVic catalogue, but also in our aggregator databases. See Is the Journal title at UVic?
Try searching for Journal title = pediatric exercise science

6. In the WebOPAC change the phrase "Your search resulted in no hits!" to
"No hits found? Check spelling and search syntax. Not at UVic?"
The "Not at UVic?" part of the phrase would be hyperlinked to a new page called "Not at UVic?" See Mock up of Not at UVic?"

From the "Not at UVic?" page the patron could choose to do a Document Delivery for a book or a journal. Either of these would do a GODOT search ensuring that UVic catalogue is searched before requesting from another library.

7. To keep wording consistent, on the Gateway Homepage under Books, etc. we would replace – Interlibrary Loan and – Document Delivery with
- Not at UVic?

8. In the WebOPAC we would delete the "Preferences" tab because it is all accessible throught "My Account". We would replace it with a tab called "Not at UVic?" See Not at UVic? tab

9. During December the WebOPAC subcommittee, in consultation with appropriate Units, will work on enhancing the new GODOT interface and updating the Inter Library Loan and Document

test - ISI Web of Knowledge Search Alert

List of journal articles written by UVic authors in Web of Science Nov 1-15, 2004.

*Record 1 of 19.

Title: teiPublisher: Bridging the gap between a simple set of structureddocuments and a functional digital library Authors: Kumar, A; Bia, A; Holmes, M; Schreibman, S; Siemens, R; Walsh, J Source: RESEARCH AND ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY FOR DIGITAL LIBRARIES, 3232: 432-441 2004 Book series title: LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE Language: English ISSN: 0302-9743 IDS Number: BAX48

*Record 2 of 19.

Title: Young children and radical change characteristics in picture books Authors: Pantaleo, S Source: READING TEACHER, 58 (2): 178-187 OCT 2004 Language: English ISSN: 0034-0561 IDS Number: 861LV