Link Roundup

Here’s a few items I thought were pretty darn neat most of which went public this year, with one very nifty exception.

The Ada Initiative http://adainitiative.org/

I think this new non-profit is really neat, and am all for “increasing participation of women in open technology and culture, which includes open source software, Wikipedia and other open data, and open social media.”  I am a little curious how things will work out as they go along, traditionally this sphere has been male dominated so it’ll be interesting to see what efforts are most successful in recruiting and retaining women in this field, and if those efforts change the culture of open technology and social media.

“The Ada Initiative is focused on helping women get careers in open technology through recruitment and training programs for women, education for community members who want to help women, and working with corporations and projects to improve their outreach to women.”

Bio Digital Human http://www.biodigitalhuman.com/ 
*Please note this is still in Beta Testing and they are still double checking images and information. Please note last time I checked it was more IE friendly than Firefox, at least the version of Firefox that I was using, no clue how it works with Chrome.

“The BioDigital Human is comprised of over 1900 scientifically accurate 3D anatomy models. View spatial relationships in unprecedented clarity.      Learn medical terms in a visual format.”  This one is just fun to play with, especially for people like me who know very little about human anatomy/biology.

JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiment) Basic Protocols http://www.jove.com 
*Okay, so this one isn’t as new, but it’s still very nifty and new to a lot of people.  I’d really love to see more publications like this and stop having budget cuts so that I could subscribe to the paid protocols!  Basic Protocols are freely available to all, but subject specific protocols require a subscription to view.

JoVE is a “..peer reviewed, PubMed indexed journal devoted to…biological, medical, chemical & physical research in a video format.”  As  former working chemist I can’t express how much simpler my life would have been if I could have seen a demonstration of a methodology in addition to reading the instructions.  Photos are nice, but actually seeing the motions etc. makes learning a new technique infinitely easier!

“Visualization greatly facilitates the understanding & efficient reproduction of both basic & complex experimental techniques, thereby addressing 2 of the biggest challenges faced by today’s life science research community: i) low transparency & poor reproducibility of biological experiments & ii) time & labor-intensive nature of learning new experimental technique.”

Out of Copyright.EU http://outofcopyright.eu

Copyright Calculators for the European Union, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland.
Determining copyright for non-USA materials has always presented a challenge for American’s, in  large part because of the sheer number of countries and regulations that had to be translated and understood to determine what is and is not in the public domain.

Science Online 2011 Badge

Overview:

After a whirlwind American Library Associations MidWinter and a couple vacation days with my family in California I headed across the United States to North Carolina for Science Online 2011, held in Research Triangle Park.  For those of you not familiar with Science Online it bills itself as an un-conference, a place where the presenters are there to facilitate a discussion, but the audience is the real source information.

I’ve been to a few un-conferences and know that you’re probably thinking about how lots of un-conference sessions fail to deliver, but I have to say that all the un-conference discussions at #scio11 that I attended had extremely engaged presenters and audience members.  Instead of wishing the session would just end at a certain point, sessions left you wishing that you had an extra hour or two to continue your discussion.

Un-conferences are often thought of as less professional, less rigorous, but #scio11 blows those preconceptions out of the water.  Unlike a traditional conference where you may be speaking with your peers in a niche area attendees at #scio11 came from many backgrounds, just to give you a small idea of the types of people I met: industry researchers, university faculty, high school teachers & students, journal editors, journalists, programmers, and science bloggers, to see more check out the #scio11 attendee list. These attendees were not a passive audience but an active and vital force which provided insight and caused discussions to turn in exciting, if unexpected, directions.

In the interest of full disclosure, and so you don’t think I’m sugar coating things, there was one snafu during the workshops on Friday when we apparently overloaded the server because the Internet connections slowed to a crawl when a room full of people tried to load and use Prezi at the same time.  As far as technical problems go I didn’t consider it that big of a deal, but I suspect with the proposed change in venue next year that it won’t be a problem in the future.

Bora's 2010

A great opening:

…by Bora & Anton (the main organizers of #scio11) followed by one of the most interesting opening speeches I’ve ever attended by Robert Krulwich.  What was unique about Robert Krulwich’s speech was that instead of using slides he used audio clips to illustrate his talk and then surprised us with a video clip at the end.  His talk has me seriously considering if that might not be an effective way to present in the future.  Clearly a master of audio timing I’d highly recommend that you listen to Krulwich’s keynote speech!

SciO11 Video: Bora & Anton Opening (Part 1)
SciO11 Video: Bora & Anton Opening (Part 2)
SciO11 Video: Robert Krulwich Keynote (Part 1)
SciO11 Video: Robert Krulwich Keynote (Part 2)
SciO11 Video: Robert Krulwich Keynote (Part 3)

Biomanufacturing:

GoldenLeaf Biomanufacturing Facility

Thanks to Russ Campbell of the Burroughs Wellcome Trust without whom we would not have been able to tour the Golden LEAF Biomanufacturing Training & Education Center.  I have to admit that initially I signed up for this tour because it was an area I needed to learn more about for work, however, thanks to Winnell Newman who provided the tour, Walter, Rhianna, and Russ I not only learned a lot about the biomanufacturing industry and training, but had a fun time while doing so.

Completely blown away:

Luckily I sat with Stacy Baker and some of the students from her class blog, Extreme Biology at the group dinners Friday night.  Not only was I impressed with the maturity of Stacy’s students, but also with their intelligence and depth of thought.  I honestly think Stacy’s students were the smartest people in the room and I had a great time chatting with them and finding out about their hopes and dreams for the future.  Watch out, Stacy’s students are going to change the world, they’re already doing it!

Sigma Xi Wall of Nobel Prize Winners

Discussions:

Active participation was the key to the #Scio11 experience.  I learned more about advances and issues in science, data curation, and science communication  from the free-range discussion sessions and the individual conversations in the hall than I could ever have learned digging around the Internet.

If you’re a science librarian, scientist, science enthusiast, or journalist and want to know what the hot issues are, what people really want, #Scio12 will be the place to be next January.  I’m really grateful to @2020Science for making me aware of the convention, it may have been the most useful information I’ve been passed all year.

Special Swag & Other Goodness:

1) The Beautiful Blue Crab DVD (Link to NCSU YouTube chanel versions)
2) Poisoner’s Handbook
3) Science of Kissing Promo Chapstick
4) Annoyatron
5) #ihuggedbora
6) Endangered Species Condoms
7) Canopy Meg <= This woman is my new science hero!

#1 Lesson Learned: Show up & participate to succeed!
Have lots of fun & make new friends & meet future collaborators at the same time!

Remember it’s never too early to plan for next year so put #Scio12 on your calendar.  I’m assured that the venue will be bigger next year, but I would register ASAP since #Scio11 sold out in 45 minutes!

Hope to see you there!

Space I acquired at UNL's Chemistry Day, note the stress balls. You know you want one!

I firmly believe the world needs more science librarians, and that this need is accelerated by the increasingly interdisciplinary, collaborative, and technological nature of science.  Sadly, as in many industries, funding is hard to come by, but even so there are openings here and there for people who are fortunate enough to live locally or to be able to move.

Defining what science librarians do, and the ideal background for a science librarian is very difficult because as the archivists like to say “it depends” on the individual, the science discipline, and the work they will be asked to do.

* Disclaimer: This post reflects my own thoughts and feelings, not necessarily those of my employer or any group with which I am affiliated.  As a new science librarian much of this post is based on my observations of successful science librarians whom I respect.

10 Traits of Science Librarians

1. Enthusiasm for science! Depending on your job you maybe highly specialized in one area, or you may cover broad subject areas, or you may need to be familiar with 8+ related fields. If you don’t like science I think it would be very hard to be a science librarian at most places.
2. Knowledge of scientific terminology. This knowledge can be gained formally or informally but the fact is the language of science is very different from that of the humanities and the arts, although it does bear some resemblance to that of the social sciences.  Having a common vocabulary is very important when communicating with scientists since the same word can mean vastly different things in different disciplines.  It’s important to be able to say what you mean and that means knowing the vocabulary of science.
3. Tech Love aka Embracing their inner geek! Instruments are increasingly high tech, most if not all data analysis is done with computers, almost all the major journals are available as e-journals, open access journals are completely electronic, and please don’t get me started on the problem of file formats and preservation!  Throw in NASA iPhone and Android applications and you can see there’s no getting away from technology when you’re involved in science.
4. Collection development skills. No matter how good your approval plan is it is not perfect, nor are all books that should be purchased available from any one company.  Science librarians also recommend electronic resources, investigate how many “seats” are needed to serve faculty and students, and try and find ways for faculty to successfully lobby for more funding of electronic resources.  We communicate to vendors what faculty and students do and do not like about their e- resource services.
5. Adaptability. The responsibilities of science librarians are constantly evolving books are only a small part of what we do. You may also teach, work the reference desk, serve on library, university, and association committees, conduct research, submit grant proposals, publish, present, help students & faculty with research questions and technology, work outreach events, attend staff and department meetings, and interact with everyone at the university from community users to the chancellor or president of your school. (These are some but not all of the things I do, and no I don’t do all of these things every week, there is not that much time in the week.)
6. Curiosity! To be successful you should be curiosity personified. In order to understand my subject areas I’m constantly reading about advances and controversies in their disciplines and related disciplines.  If you look at things from the side almost every discipline overlaps and you don’t want to miss the “big picture”.
7. Know how their library works. Subject specialists/liaisons wear many hats including what some of my faculty like to term “ambassador for the library”.  We present the good and try and help ease the sting of the bad (read budget cuts).  We advocate for the library with the faculty, and take faculty praise and concerns to the library.  We must be diplomatic, sympathetic, and congenial.  We must also be honest, dependable, and engaged.  In order to be these things we have to understand enough about what everyone else does, and be willing to find out more about how things work to field faculty questions and provide in depth answers about how things work and what we can and cannot change.  A good set of examples is that we can create course and department specific guides to resources, but we cannot add to the  current years subscriptions of journals without dropping journals of equal value, the budget for this year is set.
8. Constantly engaged with colleagues both local and dispersed. I’m very new, but one thing I’ve noticed about successful science librarians is they don’t try and do it all alone, they collaborate, they ask questions, they learn from their colleagues both near and far.   Being a librarian isn’t about knowing everything and that is even truer for science librarians.  Being a science librarian is knowing enough to find out more, ask people who know how to find what you’re looking for or refer you to someone who knows how to find it.   Maybe there is some super genius librarian succeeding in a vacuum that the rest of us don’t know about, but  the rest of us mere humans succeed through learning from our colleagues and patrons, and being willing to pass on what we have learned to others.
9. Learn their organizations political structure. If you don’t do this you will be at a severe disadvantage when you want to get things done. You are by virtue of your position a leader of sorts and you really don’t want to do everything the hard way.  Sometimes it isn’t what you ask, but who or how you ask.
10. They take to heart “Protect your dean!” (This corollary to number 9 was coined by one of my co-workers.) Your dean is in charge of the library, make sure they know about all ideas you’re actively exploring so that if someone hears about your activities and mentions them to you dean he or she isn’t left going ???? (You should always be keeping your boss in the loop too!)  A good rule of thumb is to give your dean an elevator pitch or brief e-mail about anything new you are looking into.  E-mail can be especially useful if you are shy or your dean doesn’t have an open door policy, keep in mind an e-mail doesn’t have to be terribly in depth it can be 2-3 sentences and labeled as an FYI.  If your dean wants to know more about your idea or has an objection I am sure they will let you know.  They may even have some good advice for you, but the point is you don’t leave them hanging.

* Many of these traits  are necessary to other types of librarians, but I would argue that doesn’t make them less essential to science librarianship.

What do you think are the traits of successful Science Librarians?