Categories
Calls for Participants Chair's Message

President’s Message: March 2023

Hello PAMily,

Thank you to everyone who stepped forward to moderate sessions at MLA/SLA 2023 Detroit. As you can see from other items in this edition of the Bulletin, planning is moving along for our conference sessions. PAM will also be hosting a First and Last Night Dinner and a PAM Open House.

There are MANY committee vacancies within PAM. People are simply not stepping forward. PAM is still very much active despite all factors to the contrary. We cannot keep PAM running with the same handful of people coordinating everything from year to year.

I have already had to fill 2½ committees by begging the prior members to stick around another year. There are still many committee openings unfilled. If we do not get vacancies filled in Hospitality, Awards, and the already combined Membership/Mentoring Committee, the Board will have to consider what to cut this year.

Please email me right away if you are willing to serve on the Awards, Hospitality and/or Membership Committees. The Board will re-evaluate PAM activities at our March meeting. How important is PAM to you?

Thank you,

Lance

PAM President

Categories
Calls for Participants SLA 2023 Annual Conference: MLA-SLA

Conference Session: “Welcome to the Endemic”

Would you like to speak at MLA/SLA 2023 in Detroit? We’re recruiting speakers for the “Welcome to the Endemic: Librarianship in a Post-Pandemic World” PAM session!

Description: We made quick adaptations to new ways of librarianship during the most intense times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that the virus is becoming endemic, are these adaptations also around for the long term? You will hear stories of how librarians responded to the needs of users in new and creative ways as many transitioned to remote work in 2020 and how some of these methods and services have permanently changed how we work in 2023.

This program is broad so there are many topics you can speak about! Including (but absolutely not limited to):

  • How has instruction changed since the pandemic?
  • Anything you think changed for the better or the worse since the pandemic
  • Comparison of outreach activities before, during, and after
  • Conferences moving forward
  • Any trends you’ve noticed across your library or in your work through the pandemic
  • What specific transformations has PAM or STEAM librarianship seen happen through the pandemic?
  • Have user expectations changed since the pandemic?
  • Work/life balance and work expectations
  • A new resource that post pandemic you can’t live without
  • The new normal?

We estimate presentations to be around 15 mins each and then we’ll leave space for discussion amongst the speakers and attendees. If interested, please send an email to Khue Duong (Khue.Duong@csulb.edu) and Mea Warren (mewarren@uh.edu).

Thanks!

Mea and Khue

Categories
Calls for Participants SLA 2023 Annual Conference: MLA-SLA

Conference Session: “What are Publishers’ Favorite Open Access Success Stories?”

Hello PAMily !!  

Sandy Avila and I will be chairing a session on OA success stories from the publishers’ point of view.

Description: Are citations up 200% for a journal that went Open Access (OA) only? Do you have 100 read-to-publish agreements with universities? Hear some OA success stories from publisher representatives, and see what’s next on the horizon. Panelist presenters will also respond to a series of moderated questions, and engage in question and answers with attendees.

 If you would like to be part of our panel, please contact one of us (dthompson@cfa.harvard.edu or sandya@spie.org) as soon as possible.  Come and share your successes with your librarian partners.  

Thank you,

Donna and Sandy

Categories
Calls for Participants SLA 2023 Annual Conference: MLA-SLA

Conference Session: “How Do You Engage Reluctant or Hard to Reach Users? ” 

What is your Story?

Sheila Bryant and Adwoa Boateng are moderating this panel session at the upcoming MLA/SLA conference.   We would love to hear about your experiences.

·       If you are planning to attend the conference in person and would like to speak about your experiences,  please email us  with a Yes or No or Maybe response, so we can get a speaker head count.

·      Email both moderators at : aabwml@rit.edu; bryants@msu.edu

Here is the abstract for the session:

Many librarians struggle to reach their clients, who may only touch base at a moment of need. How can librarians find ways to interact with their users and build a more engaged relationship?  In this session, learn about outreach opportunities, engaging liaison faculty with non-traditional techniques, collaborating with researchers directly in research labs and clinical settings, and building deeper engagement within the library itself.   Speakers will share stories of their actual engagement successes followed by a full question and answer period.

For further information email both : aabwml@rit.edu; bryants@msu.edu.

Session Moderators:

·      Sheila J. Bryant

Science Librarian

MSU Libraries

East Lansing, MI. 48824

bryants@msu.edu

·     Adwoa Boateng  

Science, Health Sciences Librarian

RIT Libraries

Rochester, NY 14623

aabwml@rit.edu

See you at MLA/SLA 2023!

Categories
Calls for Participants SLA 2023 Annual Conference: MLA-SLA

Conference Session: “Unique Teaching Ventures”

Hello,

Jordan Green and I are moderating this session at the upcoming MLA/SLA conference. We would love to include some short presentations (5-ish minutes) as part of our session. If you are attending the conference in person and have a unique teaching venture you would like to speak about, please get in touch! Below is the description for the session.

Unique Teaching Ventures: Making Inroads in New Areas

Description: Why is this librarian showing us cartoons? What are Latex (with or without Overleaf) and JupyterLab? Can my librarian help with data visualization and story maps? Why are these library course guides linked in my class? See how librarians are using different methods to reach users, and how these methods move beyond the traditional “search, evaluate, and cite” one-shot session. Presenters will share successful strategies for teaching excellence including non-information literacy opportunities to pursue in the classroom and breaking the instructor mold by teaching in new ways. Attendees will also learn about opportunities librarians have in the classroom to promote principles of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

If you have any questions about this session, please let me (hartj@uchicago.edu) and Jordan (jordan22@email.unc.edu) know.

Best,

Jenny Hart

Categories
Calls for Participants SLA 2023 Annual Conference: MLA-SLA

Conference Session: “Beyond The Impact Factor”

Are you coming to MLA/SLA 2023 in Detroit? Do you have experience with research impact? Do you want to share that experience? Well, do we have an opportunity for you! We are currently looking for speakers for the “Beyond the Impact Factor: How Do You Show Success Beyond a Single Number?” PAM session!

Description: What do you mean my journal doesn’t have an impact factor? Why am I not seeing my item in Web of Science? How do I show its impact with that? Many of us hear such examples from users who need to show how their work has impact, but the traditional citation counts and impact factors are not always sufficient – or paint only a partial picture. Find out how to paint more of that picture for your users, and help them understand alternative options for metrics.

We believe in the big tent approach for topics, so please do not hesitate to bring us any idea, as long as it is related, in some way, to research impact.

Here is an in no way comprehensive list of example topics:

Helping Faculty Tell their Engagement Stories

The Ways Narrative CVs Do and Do Not Work

Contextualizing and Problematizing Metrics for Different Audiences

How You Weaned your Faculty Off the H-Index

Implementing DORA, SCOPE, or Leiden at Your Institution

What Social Media Metrics Really Mean

Illustrating the Impact of Teaching, Leadership, and Outreach

….And many, many more

Do NOT let this list limit you! If you have a story to tell about going beyond the traditional impact metrics like the H-Factor, we want to hear about it.

We are open to presentations ranging in length from 5-15 minutes each, followed by a group discussion. Please email Sam Hansen (hansensm@umich.edu) or Meg Eastwood (meg.eastwood@du.edu) if you are interested.

Categories
Sponsors

Winter PAM Bulletin Sponsor: SIAM

Categories
Elections

PAM Election Results

Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to announce that we have new a Secretary and Chair-Elect.

Sarah Siddiqui received 80 “Yes” votes and 1 “No” vote for Chair-Elect.

Henrik Spoon received 80 “Yes” votes for Secretary.

Sarah and Henrik will assume their new roles on January 1, 2023. We are very grateful to both of them for accepting to fill these roles.

Thanks to all of you for voting, and I hope when there are open positions, you decide to volunteer your time for PAM.  It is a wonderful community, and serving it is a rewarding  experience professionally and personally.

Sincerely,

Lauren Gala and Zary Kamarei

PAM Nominations & Elections Committee

Categories
Chair's Message SLA 2023 Annual Conference: MLA-SLA

Chair’s Message: 2023 PAM Conference Proposals

Hello PAMily,

The PAM Board formed a working group to address submitting proposals to the MLA-SLA conference organizers in light of the unusual timeline for the 2023 conference. The working group made five proposals. All five were tentatively accepted and the proposal titles and descriptions are below for your information. Please note that these proposals are not exclusive to the traditional PAM subject area round tables.

Title: Unique teaching ventures: Making inroads in new areas

Description: Why is this librarian showing us cartoons? What are Latex (with or without Overleaf) and JupyterLab? Can my librarian help with data visualization and story maps? Why are these library course guides linked in my class? See how librarians are using different methods to reach users and how these methods move beyond the traditional search, evaluate, and cite one-shot session. Presenters will share successful strategies for teaching excellence including non-information literacy opportunities to pursue in the classroom and breaking the instructor mold by teaching in new ways. Attendees will also learn about opportunities librarians have in the classroom to promote principles of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Title: How do you engage reluctant or hard to reach users?

Description: Many librarians struggle to reach their clients, who may only touch base at a moment of need. How can librarians find ways to interact with their users and build a more engaged relationship? In this session, learn about outreach opportunities, engaging liaison faculty with non-traditional techniques, collaborating with researchers directly in research labs and clinical settings, and building deeper engagement within the library itself. Presenters will share stories of their actual engagement successes followed by a full question and answer period.

Title: Welcome to the Endemic: Librarianship in a Post-Pandemic World

Description: We made quick adaptations to new ways of librarianship during the most intense times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that the virus is becoming endemic, are these adaptations also around for the long term? You will hear stories of how librarians responded to the needs of users in new and creative ways as many transitioned to remote work in 2020 and how some of these methods and services have permanently changed how we work in 2023.

Title: Beyond the impact factor: How do you show success beyond a single number?

Description: What do you mean my journal doesn’t have an impact factor? Why am I not seeing my item in Web of Science, how do I show its impact? Many of us hear such examples from users who need to show how their work has impact, but the traditional citation counts and impact factors are not always sufficient – or paint only a partial picture. Find out how to paint more of that picture for your users and help them understand alternative metrics options.

Title: What are publishers’ favorite OA success stories?

Description: Are citations up 200% for a journal that went Open Access (OA) only? Do you have 100 read-to-publish agreements with universities? Hear some OA success stories from publisher representatives and see what’s next on the horizon. Panelist presenters will also respond to a series of moderated questions and engage in question and answers with attendees.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Thank you,

Lance Utley

PAM President/Chair

Categories
PAM Awards

PAM Awards: 2022

2022 PAM Awards

PAM Achievement Award

The purpose of the PAM Achievement Award is to recognize those Community members who have made outstanding contributions to the Community, and whose professional work is marked by distinction and dedication to librarianship in astronomy, mathematics, physics, and/or computer science.

This year our award goes to an individual whose commitment and service to the Special Libraries Association and the Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics Community has been unparalleled. First winning the IOP Travel Stipend in 2012, he went on to serve as Editor of the PAM Bulletin, a member of the PAM Awards Committee, and the chair of the PAM Awards Committee. In 2017 he won the Special Libraries Association Rising Star Award, and continued his dedication to PAM by fulfilling the three-year term of Chair-Elect, Chair, and Past-Chair for the PAM Community from 2018 through 2020, all while recruiting, welcoming, and mentoring new members to PAM. From conference talks to poster presentations to journal articles, his contributions to our profession have been remarkable and numerous. A PAM member said that this year’s awardee “has been a vital source of support for many early-career librarians in PAM. One of the many ways he’s made his mark on our division is by intentionally reaching out to new members and getting them involved with leadership roles. I connected with the award winner as a new librarian at a time when I questioned my future in the profession, and with his support and encouragement he influenced me to stay and grow and fulfill my potential as a STEM librarian. Like many others, I am grateful for his mentorship and friendship.”

In addition to exceptional service to SLA and PAM, our award recipient recently took on a new position as Associate University Librarian for Research and Engagement at the Robert W. Van Houten Library at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His supervisor said: “As the AUL, John will focus on outreach to the NJIT community to support the curricular needs and scholarly endeavors and expand new initiatives and partnerships with faculty, students, and administrators. Additionally, John will work toward creating a transformative library space to maximize exploration, experimentation, and implementation of new service approaches in a new normal academic library environment. It has been a pleasure getting to know John. I have found him to be compassionate and motivated. He is pleasant and insightful, making him a joy to collaborate and work with. He displays enthusiasm and professionalism in everything he does, including interactions with the team he supervises. Success depends on strong people skills and a lifelong learning attitude; John possesses these traits, and I am fortunate to have John join my team. I have no doubt he will be a tremendous asset during his tenure at NJIT.”

While John gifts us with his tremendous scholarship, commitment to SLA, and support to PAM, he is also a delightful presence at PAM’s social events and well known for excelling at games and trivia. His many triumphs at PAM game nights and his appearance on the nationally televised quiz show “The Chase,” illustrate that John not only offers PAM his leadership and professional expertise, but a sense of fun and friendship as well.

On behalf of the PAM Awards Committee, it is my great pleasure to present the 24th PAM Achievement Award to John Kromer!

PAM Division Award

The PAM Division Award is granted to an individual or organization that provides a significant contribution to the literature of physics, astronomy, mathematics, and/or computer science, or to honor work that demonstrably improves the exchange of information in one or more of these areas.

The recipient of this year’s PAM Division Award has a long history of disseminating physics information. They first began publishing in 1874, known then as the Physical Society of London, and then began working in conjunction with another society, the Institute of Physics, in 1921. For over 100 years, IOP has been growing into a global nonprofit publisher who partners with numerous academic societies and research organizations, including CERN, the American Astronomical Society, and the London Mathematical Society, to publish over 100 scholarly journals as well as proceedings and books.

IOP Publishing is committed to making their organization and their journals more inclusive, including improving the gender and geographical diversity of editorial stakeholders and creating targets for journals to diversify their editorial boards and reviewer pools. They are exploring ways to create a physics community that is more diverse and inclusive through double-blind peer review, implicit bias training, and other initiatives. They publish literature dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion such as the forthcoming book An Astronomical Inclusion Revolution: Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Professional Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Scientific researchers in developing countries receive support from IOP Publishing through their involvement in Electronic Information for Libraries, a nonprofit organization that works to help developing countries gain access to information as well as through their participation in the International Network for Advancing Science and Policy’s Program for the Enhancement of Research Information, a program to give zero or low cost electronic journal access to developing countries. They also take part in the eJournals Delivery Service offered by The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste to help provide scientists in low-income countries with access to current physics and mathematics literature.

Strong supporters of open physics, IOP Publishing produces 27 fully open access journal titles and over 50 hybrid open access titles. The Unified Astronomy Thesaurus, an open thesaurus that won the 2021 PAM Division Award, was developed by a community that included IOP Publishing. Additionally, they have made a commitment to prioritizing sustainability through being signatories in the UN’s sustainable development goals and through their environmental and energy policies that promote environmental good practice.

In addition to their many forward-thinking and innovative initiatives, IOP Publishing has had a longstanding tradition of fostering a strong partnership with PAM. They have been steadfast and enthusiastic collaborators for PAM educational sessions and special events. For many years, IOP Publishing has graciously hosted the PAM Suite, providing us with invaluable opportunities to network with our colleagues and enjoy a restorative break from the rigors of the Annual Conference.

For their contributions connecting scholars to literature all over the world, on behalf of the PAM Awards Committee, I am pleased to present the 33rd PAM Division Award to IOP Publishing! 

PAM Awards Committee:

Nancy Curtis, Laurie Neuerburg, Kelly Durkin Ruth

Categories
Members Corner

New PAMILY Column!

Jeffra Bussmann, Isabel Altamirano, Nastasha Johnson, Gr Keer, and Sam Hansen published the final column on Capstone social justice concepts in their special series on Science Librarianship and Social Justice. We hope that you will use these articles to not only enhance your understanding but also to take action and make a positive impact at your library, especially for those with less privilege.  Additionally, Jeffra has converted the articles into a LibGuide for science faculty and students that is open to the LibGuides community to copy, modify, and include in your LibGuides collection. Feel free to contact Jeffra (jeffra.bussmann@csueastbay.edu) if you have any questions about this process. 

Column:

https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/istl/index.php/istl/article/view/2697

Libguide:

https://library.csueastbay.edu/sciencewithsocialjustice

Categories
Elections

PAM Elections

Hi PAM,

Tuesday  9/13 at 9am EST, the 2022 PAM Board election ballot notice was emailed to PAM members.  This year, we are voting on PAM President-Elect and PAM Secretary positions.

The ballot will be open from 9/13 to 9/27.  Exercise your right to vote!

NOTE: The ballot notice will come from SurveyMonkey.  Please check your spam/trash folders if you don’t see it. If you do not see a link to the survey in your inbox please contact a member of the Nominations and Elections Committee.

Thank you,

PAM Nominations and Elections Committee

Zary Kamarei

Lauren Gala

Categories
Chair's Message

Call For Comment: Committee Charges

Date: July 15th, 2022

Hi Everyone,

At yesterday’s PAM Executive Board Advisory Council Meeting, two items were raised that the Board opted to table until our next Executive Board meeting in the September timeframe after conference. This email is your invitation to comment on the two items before the next meeting.

International Relations Committee

-This Committee has not been formed since the pandemic began. It is our hope that in 2023 the committee’s charge can resume.

-To that end the suggestion was made to reset the Committee’s term of appointment from the September 1 to August 31st current interval to a January 1 to December 31st interval.

Awards Committee

-The PAM Awards Committee is charged with administering the PAM awards including the Division and Achievement Awards.

-The suggestion was made to expand the Committee’s charge to include taking an active role in nominating members for SLA level awards.

-The Committee would also monitor eligibility periods for new members to make sure no deserving member misses the early career window for the Rising Star award.

-This effort would not preclude any individual actions to nominate members for SLA awards.

Please email me or any member of the board by September 1, 2022 to share any comments you have on these matters. You can also email the entire Board with the address, pam-board@listmgr.nrao.edu . The board members are listed below.

Sincerely,

Lance Utley

PAM Chair/President

Pronouns: he, him, his

Board Members

Chair: Lance Utley

Past Chair: Chris Doty

Secretary: Ruth Kneale

Member-at-Large/Finances: Rebecca Hutchinson

Director: Alison Verbeck

Categories
Chair's Message

Message from the PAM Chair: July 2022 (Conference Update!)

PAM’s plans for annual conference 2022 Charlotte are finalized. Our four round tables are set, and we have a great slate of speakers prepared for the Community. We hope you will find them all enriching. We also have the traditional slate of social events at which we hope to see you!

Your Hospitality Committee has arranged a First Night Dinner and Last Night Dinner. The First Night Dinner, sponsored by Optica, is at 6 pm on Saturday, July 30th at Aria Tuscan Grill. The Last Night Dinner, sponsored by SPIE Digital Library, is at 5:30 pm on Tuesday, August 2nd at Mimosa Grill. Please see the details Chris Doty sent to PAMnet June 16th. We are incredibly grateful to Optica and SPIE for their generous sponsorship of our fellowship and networking events. Thank you!

The PAM Open House is scheduled for Monday, August 1st at 6:30 pm. This event is generously sponsored by AIP Publishing. Please plan to come mix and mingle at the Open House and show AIP how much they mean to PAM. We will be cutting a cake in celebration of the PAM 50th Anniversary. Many thanks to AIP for their support of this favorite event!

No conference would be complete without the IOP Publishing PAM Suite Daily Retreat. IOPP is once again providing a Suite for us to gather in, mingle, unwind, and enjoy each other’s company. Did you know IOPP has been supporting the Suite for well over 20 years!?!? Please plan to stop by repeatedly, join your PAMily on the couch, and catch up. IOPP sent each PAM member personal invites to attend the Suite including all the details, so please be sure to RSVP. This year the Suite will also include a Virtual Suite time for our distant PAMily to gather with us, too. Thank you so much to IOPP for once again providing PAM the beloved Suite for us where the true essence of what it means to be PAMily can be found.

For those staying until Wednesday after conference, there is a PAM group outing at the NASCAR Hall of Fame organized by the Hospitality Committee. Purchase your tickets online in advance and meet at the Hall of Fame at 10 am on August 3rd. Please see the details Chris Doty sent to PAMnet June 16th.

All indications from SLA are that sessions and events are now populated to the conference schedule. PAM will also provide Dance Cards to highlight all our events.

Speaking of things you’ll receive… Each PAM member attending conference will receive a 50th Anniversary lanyard sponsored by American Mathematical Society. You’ll receive a chocolate bar with a special surprise inside sponsored by American Association for the Advancement of Science. The coveted IOP Publishing mugs will be handed out in the Suite and everyone is dying to know what this year’s design is. And to celebrate the 50th Anniversary, we also have commemorative pins and shiny gold PAM stickers. Finally, those who attend the First and Last Night Dinners will receive Golden Tickets for the end of year raffle. Thank you so much to AMS, AAAS, and IOPP for the swag and your support of PAM!

-Lance Utley, 2022 PAM Chair

Categories
Sponsors

Bulletin Sponsor – Summer 2022: EDP Sciences

Categories
Pro Dev

PDC Webinar: “Advancing Your LibGuides”

Presenter: Daniel Dotson, Ohio State University

Original Date: April 21, 2022

Categories
Chair's Message

Message from the PAM Chair: April 2022

Hello PAMily,

I hope everyone is doing well, as spring seems to finally be taking hold in most areas. I wanted to share a few updates before I get into information about Charlotte 2022.

PAM Board

At the most recent PAM Executive Board meeting, February 23rd, the Board addressed the vacancy created by the resignation of PAM Secretary, Debal Kar. Board governance provides for the opportunity to have a volunteer fill the remainder of an elected member of the Board’s term, should they leave before that term ends. Ruth Kneale volunteered to take on the remaining months of Debal’s term, and the Board passed a motion to accept her into the role of PAM Secretary. Welcome back to the PAM Board, Ruth! Thank you for jumping in.

History Project

The Board also discussed the 50th Anniversary Task Force’s suggestion to form a task force to begin a PAM history project. After brief discussion, the Board voted to form said task force, and charged it with gathering oral and written history, stories of PAM members past and present throughout PAM’s 50 year history. Please consider volunteering to join to PAM History Task Force. If you are interested in being a part of this interesting project, please email me at lutley@nrao.edu today.

50th Anniversary

The 50th Anniversary Task Force continues to plan monthly events in celebration of our anniversary. So far they’ve hosted a trivia and puzzle game night, a Pecha Kucha contest, and a Wikipedia edit-a-thon. For April, the TF is co-sponsoring a Professional Development Committee training session, on making the most of LibGuides. At the 2022 annual conference, PAM attendees can look forward to anniversary commemorative items including a new anniversary pin, special decorations in the IOP PAM Suite, a super celebration at the PAM Open House, and more. After conference, the monthly activities will continue until December when those Golden Tickets you’ve been collecting turn into raffle tickets for prizes.

SLA 2022 Charlotte, Source Forward

Now for a conference update! PAM submitted four educational session proposals to the Annual Conference Advisory Council and all four proposals were accepted. PAM also submitted requests for five events: a First Night Dinner, the PAM Open House, the PAM Business Meeting, a Last Night Dinner, and a group tour. The ACAC is working now to iron out final details of those sessions and events and assemble a final conference schedule. In the meantime, they have offered an At-A-Glance schedule (https://www.sla.org/sla-2022-schedule-at-a-glance/) to give us an idea what the conference will generally look like. The early bird registration rate is available until June 1 and the ACAC has promised a final schedule in early May.

If you attended the recent Town Hall, you heard mention of the contingency plans being drawn up, in the event that local COVID considerations require adjustments to the conference plan. These contingencies consist of: changing an appropriate amount of in-person sessions to on demand; pre-recorded sessions; and possibly needing to restrict the schedule to limit the number of attendees in sessions, the number of sessions one person can attend, and the extent to which one can move about in the conference center. This is just contingency planning.

SLA has every intention of our conference being an in-person experience, with some changes from what we normally expect already in place. Namely, there will be no pre-conference Continuing Education courses, no meetings before conference, and all poster sessions will be virtual only. If you plan to attend virtually, SLA will be hosting one live stream of an in-person session during each time slot of the conference schedule. Virtual attendees will also have access to all on demand sessions, and your in-person registration will include all virtual components.

There is still much to be settled about 2022 Charlotte- as more details emerge, you can expect to hear about them in messages from SLA, and I will continue to provide updates through PAMnet.

Sincerely,

Lance Utley

2022 PAM Chair/President

Categories
Members Corner

Hathi Emergency Temporary Access Service: What Science was Accessed the Most?  The Indiana University Experience

By Robert Noel, Indiana University

As many of us are aware, the Hathi ETAS was launched shortly after the beginning of COVID-19, and lasted through August of 2021.  The service was designed to help researchers and students continue their access to “in copyright” content during the pandemic as libraries were closed, or open with limited hours.  For those universities that left the service on from April 2020 through August 2021, HathiTrust was able to supply those institutions with use data.

Indiana University has strong programs in music, languages, area studies, and the humanities in general, so it was no surprise that those subject areas dominated the top 300 books accessed by IU logins.  Like most libraries, the distribution of use of materials during a fixed time frame, when graphed, resulted in a pareto diagram, with a small number of titles getting very high, regular use, with a long tail of infrequently used or low demand titles.

The first science or math to show up was the 18th most heavily accessed book, “Probability” by Jim Pitman.  This book is regularly used as a text for courses, and has been a Reserve print book at IU for several semesters.  It was accessed by 60 different IU users across IU campuses, with 108 online renewals.

The 30th most heavily used resource was the old journal run “Electronics”, with 48 unique IU users accessing, and 3 renewals.  This is also a reminder that the Hathi ETAS did not simply include online books, it also included online journals, book sets, and book series.

At number 79 on our list was a 1946 “Adventures in Time and Space”, an anthology of modern science fiction stories, with 30 unique users and 6 renewals.

There is no doubt that other science monographs were heavily used online during the covid pandemic, it is just that IU users enjoyed access through means other than Hathi Emergency Access.  It is most likely that heavily used mathematics and computer science was delivered to students by digital libraries held by IU such as Skillport, the platform for the extremely high demand 3rd edition of Cormen’s “Introduction to Algorithms” (MIT Press).  Others were presented to students via Proquest Ebook Central, EBSCO, and other providers.

The next mathematics book on the list (182nd, with 19 unique users and 9 renewals) was Elementary and Middle School Mathematics, by Van de Walle, Karp, and Bay-Williams.  Again, this text was most likely required reading for School of Education students preparing to teach K-8 mathematics.

Below is a listing of the top 10 books access by IU users ranked according to number of unique IDs viewing.  There is no question that permitting access to these titles during the pandemic was a great benefit to both the institution, and the students and researchers working here.  If you have questions, or if your university made use of Hathi ETAS through last fall, and you have access to the use data and would like to compare or contrast your experiences with Indiana University, please feel free to contact me.

Top 10 Most Heavily Used ETAS Books by Indiana University    
TitlePublisher / YearAuthorUnique IU LoginsRenewals
Creating Black Americans : African-American history and its meanings, 1619 to the presentOxford Univ Press / 2006Nell Irwin Painter406222
The encyclopedia of popular musicOxford Univ Press / 2006Colin Larkin354830
Conversation in the cathedralHarper & Row / 1975Mario Vargas Llosa10769
The new Rolling stone record guideRandom House / 1983Dave Marsh, John Swenson10352
Love Medicine : a novelBantam Books / 1984Louise Erdrich9689
Reading Modern RussianSlavica Publishers / 1979Jules F. Levin and Peter D. Haikalis, with Anatole A. Forostenko9350
Island of Dr. MoreauPenguin/ 2005 [1896]H.G. Wells8670
Dark continent : Europe’s twentieth centuryA.A. Knopf / 1999Mark Mazower8464
Chopin at the boundaries : sex, history, and musical genreHarvard Univ Press / 1996Jeffrey Kallberg8048
Engaging art : the next great transformation of America’s cultural lifeRoutledge / 2008Steven J. Tepper, Bill Ivey7431

Bob Noel

Sciences Librarian

Liaison to Physics, Astronomy, Mathematics, School of Informatics

Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405

Categories
PAM Awards

PAM Awards- April 2022

The deadline for PAM Awards nominations was April 1, 2022, and it is now closed. Thank you to all who submitted nominations!

– Laurie J. Neuerburg

Categories
Members Corner

New Journal Article!

A new article by members of the PAMily has been published in the journal Library Leadership and Management: 

Palumbo, Laura Bolton, Jeffra D. Bussmann, and Barbara Kern. “A View from the Top: Library Leaders’ Predictions for the Future of Science Liaison Librarianship.” Library Leadership & Management 36, no. 1. https://journals.tdl.org/llm/index.php/llm/article/view/7511