[Sigsti-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.


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Peter Kirlew
University of Minnesota Libraries