[Asis-l] ACRL Science and Technology Section - Research Forum Sunday at 2011 ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans

[Peter Kirlew]

***Please excuse cross posting***

ACRL/Science and Technology Section; 2011 Annual Research Forum
Sunday June 26, 2011; MCC Room 348; 4:00-5:30 pm

Abstracts of the Papers for the STS Research Forum, ALA New Orleans:


1. Exploring New Frontiers: Data Management Support on Campus;
Christie Peters & Robin Dasler, University of Houston

A team of science librarians at the University of Houston is working
on a project to assess current data curation practices and
grant-relateddata management plan preparedness on the part of
University of Houstonresearchers. We believe that the lack of a
centralized data management mechanism on the UH campus results in
researchers who are unprepared for the new NSF data management mandate
and are struggling to meet this and other grant-related data
requirements.  For this assessment, we will interview nine NSF and
five NIH grant recipients who received awards during fiscal year 2010.
 These fourteen grants total over five million dollars during FY10,
represent twelve different science departments, and are made up of
both individuals and interdisciplinary groups. It is our hope that
this study will help the science team determine how it can best help
researchers to fulfill their data management needs, thereby creating a
new niche for ourselves on campus.  We do not expect to be the sole
solution, as our library does not currently have the infrastructure
necessary to manage all of the data on campus, but we hope this study
will serve as a first step towards creating a centralized data
management solution in conjunction with other campus units.



2. Rising to the Top: The Search Engine Optimization of Online Library
Resources;
Emily Jacobson and Anna Welch; Pratt Institute SILS

The expansion of the discovery environment beyond library walls
challenges libraries’ status as information providers. Web search
engines are now a primary discovery tool for researchers, who turn to
Google as often as, or more often than, querying a reference librarian
or online library resource. If libraries acknowledge that their
potential users turn to search engines with information needs that
digital library resources could meet, they have the responsibility to
consider applying search engine optimization (SEO) to those resources.
A literature review of SEO practices in libraries uncovered little
effort and few resources towards building and describing digital
resources in a search optimized way. As science libraries join other
special libraries in digitizing collections and creating unique
born-digital resources, the adoption of SEO practices becomes
particularly relevant. Beyond an increase in the use of library pages
and an increased diversity of external users, more visibility in
search engines has the potential to increase collaboration within the
scientific community. An important step in understanding the benefits
of search optimization to libraries is measuring the gap between the
current state of resources and SEO best practices. We will therefore
audit several science-related online resources with a consistent set
of metrics built from applicable best practices in the search field.
With the results of this audit, we will draft a rubric for the
optimization of library pages. Our results will begin to prove whether
libraries’ investment in SEO is justified, or even imperative.



3. Social Networking for Library and Information Science Literature.
John Meier, Penn State University

As a science librarian, I felt inundated by the sheer number of
articles published in the library and information science field.
While RSS made it easier for me to follow my favorite journals, there
were still dozens of articles a month.  I wanted to work more closely
with my colleagues around the world to sift through this tidal wave.
I obtained funding to create a website that gathers RSS article feeds
from a core set of journals in the field and volunteer participants
provide the user generated content of ranking, tags and comments
(LISLIT 2010). I hypothesized that, as users of this website,
librarians will save time, network with their peers, and improving
their discovery of the latest research.  I am measuring participation
in the user community with a number of metrics.  The system tracks
each user’s frequency of posting, commenting, and voting on articles.
Also web metrics have been used to measure the use of every page on
the website as well as the effectiveness of marketing using Google
Adwords and Facebook. There have been reports on a number of recent
studies involving “alternative metrics” for scholarly impact
(Mandavilli, 2011).  I hope to demonstrate that these new ways of
post-publication peer-review can be effectively used by librarians.  I
also hope to show with the multiple usage statistics which
user-created groups are most active (right now it is Sci-Tech
Librarians) and suggest future directions for the profession.


-----------------------------------


Peter Kirlew
University of Minnesota Libraries