February 22, 2010

Assessing Collections & Information Resources in Science & Technology (Call for Presentations)

CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS - Assessing Collections & Information Resources in Science & Technology
co-sponsored by ACS CINF and SLA Chemistry Division

240th ACS National Meeting & Exposition
Boston, Massachusetts, August 22-26, 2010
CINF Division

Collections and resources for scientific information are changing rapidly in format and accessibility, budget pressures are forcing hard decisions. How can information professionals assess the utility of collections for their clientele? Do you monitor usage statistics or other measures? How do they influence your decision making for managing budgets and services? How do different stakeholders utilize information about usage? We are interested in presentations from librarians, publishers and other information professionals on best practices for tackling this kaleidoscope of issues.

Topics might include:

  • how libraries use usage stats
  • how to compare similar resources to each other (such as Reaxys & SciFinder)
  • journals / ebooks / databases - different resources, different stats
  • how can compare different publishers (standardization)
  • how publishers use data
  • technical issues around stats
  • how to use stats on cancellations?
  • qualitative information methodologies (ex. Focus groups)
Abstracts may be submitted via: http://abstracts.acs.org
Submissions will be accepted through March 28, 2010.

Please contact: Leah Solla (leah.solla@cornell.edu) or Erja Kajosalo (kajosalo@mit.edu) for more information.

February 1, 2010

Call for Posters: 2010 Conference

All Sciences Poster Session - June 15, 2010 (Tuesday) - SLA Conference, New Orleans

SESSION CO-SPONSORS:
Biomedical & Life Sciences, Chemistry, Engineering, Food Agriculture and Nutrition, Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics, and Science-Technology Divisions, Special Libraries Association

CALL FOR POSTERS:
Is your library or knowledge center engaged in a new or innovative project that builds on a new strategic alignment, develops or adapts a novel operational model to reframe services, or synthesizes creative approaches to achieve scientific information or visual fluency in your group or organization?

Please consider sharing the results of your efforts at the upcoming All-Sciences Poster Session on Tuesday, June 15, 2010, at the Annual SLA Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. We are looking for poster submissions that explore any of these themes [more information about these poster themes are at the end of this post].:

  • New Strategic Alignments
  • Survival and Success Beyond an Economic Recession
  • Information Literacy, User Instruction and E-Learning in the Sciences During and Beyond an Economic Recession: New Methods, New Participants, New Tools
Your poster presentation could help your colleagues immeasurably as we all seek to cultivate or enhance scientists' knowledge management skills and to demonstrate the value of our services to our parent organizations or potential clients. The poster session provides an informal and lively venue for sharing your innovative ideas on an important topic.

ELIGIBILITY:
Any SLA member is welcome to submit an abstract. In the event that a greater number of submissions are received than can be accommodated, members of the sponsoring science divisions will be given first preference.

GUIDELINES and LAYOUT:
Guidelines for materials and layout of poster presentations are available on the SLA Chemistry Division website at http://www.sla.org/division/dche/poster.html.

SUBMISSION of ABSTRACT:
  • DEADLINE is March 15, 2010
  • Please submit your name, institution, email address, poster title, and description (250 words or less) by email to Bill Armstrong at notwwa@lsu.edu
NOTIFICATION of ACCEPTANCE:
All applicants will be notified re: poster proposal acceptance on or before April 1, 2010.

QUESTIONS:
Contact Bill Armstrong (notwwa@lsu.edu) and/or Irene Laursen (irenelaursen@ymail.com)


POSTER THEMES

1. NEW STRATEGIC ALIGNMENTS
In the currently recovering global economy, new cooperative arrangements are emerging to help our parent organizations or our core units--libraries, information centers, knowledge bases--adjust to rapidly evolving economic conditions. These developments may include new consortial initiatives, redesign of specific sectors of the workforce, outreach to new constituencies, innovative alliances between academe and the for-profit sector, or other collaborative scientific ventures. Come share pivotal steps of the process, changes in responsibilities or reporting relationships, and lessons learned from the success or failure of these ventures in the sciences.

2. SURVIVAL AND SUCCESS BEYOND AN ECONOMIC RECESSION
How do we promote, preserve, and redesign our research and analytical services in 2010 and beyond ? Let's look at how new operational models (scientific, technical, engineering, and medical e-book vendors, formal and informal modes of scientific communication, intergovernmental initiatives) are evolving, what we can do to improve them, and projections for academe, business, and industry in the scientific environment.

3. INFORMATION LITERACY, USER INSTRUCTION, AND E-LEARNING IN THE SCIENCES DURING AND BEYOND THE RECESSION: NEW METHODS, NEW PARTICIPANTS, NEW TOOLS

a. New tools and techniques for the interdisciplinary scientific information professional dealing with electronic management of citations, data, structures, graphical analysis, mapping, and/or presentations. Including innovative uses of social networking applications.

b. Electronic demos, tutorials, games in the sciences
Who produces them (publisher, in-house development) Who uses them? How are they funded, developed, publicized, marketed, and evaluated? What is their useful lifetime?

c. Scientific Information Fluency
What successes or failures have you encountered in teaching patrons – faculty, students, researchers, etc. – new ways of handling information in an all-electronic workflow, from the literature search to the discovery and publication process?