December 1997
|
Engineering Libraries Division
Newsletter December 1997 |
| In this Issue
Program Update
Union List Subcommittee The Happy (Peripatetic) Librarian
ELD Publications Committee |
Message from the ChairMembers of the Engineering Library Division of ASEE have a long history of electronic communication. Electronic mail between colleagues was probably our first experience with this medium. Then we moved to global e-mail groups, listservs, and web sites. I wish to highlight, encourage, and challenge ELD members to continue their efforts in electronic communication. ELDNET-L Listserv - The listserv was approved by the ELD Executive Committee at the 1991 Annual Conference in New Orleans. ELD began its moderated listserv, ELDNET-L in August 1991. Mel DeSart proposed this service to the Division and serves as the editor and fearless leader. The listserv was first housed at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and is currently archived at the University of Kansas--Lawrence. It has served well as a means to communicate the Division's business and help members query colleagues for information on all aspects of engineering librarianship. ASEE/ELD Duplicates Exchange - The ASEE/ELD Duplicates Exchange was begun in 1992 by Orion Pozo of North Carolina State University. It was approved at the 1992 Annual Conference. The service is a global e-mail group which offers people the opportunity to distribute duplicate materials to other libraries. Orion also gleans science and engineering titles from the BACKLIST listserv and forwards these to the Duplicates Exchange. If you are interested in sending or receiving lists of duplicate materials, please send email to: ORION_POZO@NCSU.EDU. ELD Web Site - The ELD web site was first proposed at the 1995 annual meeting. An ad hoc committee had been working and a draft web page was available for viewing. The Executive Committee approved the web page. It has been particularly helpful for organization and conference information. For 1995-97, David Carter and Jim Ottaviani served as webmasters, and the web site was available through the University of Michigan. Thanks to Dave and Jim for their creativity and hard work. Jill Powell of Cornell University was appointed the webmaster in 1997. She has made a quick transition and has recently moved the web site to Cornell. The address is: http://www.englib.cornell.edu/eld/ . Please visit the site and see what will be happening at next year's conference. I encourage standing committee chairs to determine which of their activities might be highlighted on the web site. Please forward all suggestions to Jill Powell. An ad hoc committee has been appointed to work with the webmaster and set up policies, guidelines, and expectations for the web site. Committee members are: Karen Clay, Andy Shimp, and Michael White. Sheila Curl and Godlind Johnson will serve as advisors. Thank You - I commend the electronic innovators of the Engineering Libraries Division. ELD members involved in innovations encouraged the Division to try new ways of communicating. I would especially like to thank the project implementers: Mel DeSart, Orion Pozo, David Carter, Jim Ottaviani, and Jill Powell. These people are keys to our continued success in communicating with each other. Thank you for your time and commitment to electronic communication.
Charlotte A.Erdmann
erdmann@ecn.purdue.edu Newsletter ChangeCongratulations to Dena Thomas on her new job in Ireland. Dena has done an excellent job of editing the ELD newsletter for the last 3 1/2 years. ELD will miss her superb skills as an organizer and editor. Please join me in thanking her for being another great communication innovator. The Division will be looking for a new editor to complete Dena's term. A posting to ELDNET-L will be made soon.
Charlotte Erdmann Spotlight on EEVLhttp://www.eevl.ac.uk/ EEVL: the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library, is a hand-crafted user-friendly service which provides easy access to networked engineering resources, with the emphasis on the UK. EEVL's main services are free, and no registration is required. EEVL is a UK-based not-for-profit gateway to engineering information on the Internet. Its newly designed web site now offers additional features and services. EEVL is a major source of networked information for engineers. A few months ago EEVL was chosen as a Scout Report Selection; it is a Yahoo! UK & Ireland footnote site; its first service was chosen as Best New Site by Information World Review; and it was given a 5-star rating by the sci.engr List of WWW Sources. The newly designed home pages make it easier to use. EEVL's various services include a searchable database of over 2,500 UK and worldwide engineering resources featuring engineering companies, e-journals, recruitment agencies, courseware and training materials, software, mailing lists, university departments, and research projects; a UK engineering search engine for over 32,000 UK engineering web pages; a searchable engineering newsgroup archive; a manufacturing bibliographic database; an offshore engineering list of meetings and conferences; a liquid crystal database; a jet impingement database; the full text of an issue of Science and Engineering Network News; and a bibliography of guides to engineering information on the Internet. Also available are lists of the top 25 most visited engineering sites in the UK and worldwide. EEVL provides engineers of all kinds - practicing engineers, academics, researchers, students - and anyone else looking for engineering information, with a centralised access point on the Internet. All engineering disciplines are covered by EEVL, including: Chemical, Civil, Electrical, Electronic and Computer, Design, Environmental, Materials, Mechanical and Manufacturing, and Petroleum and Offshore. EEVL is funded through the Joint Information Systems Committee's Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib). For more information, contact R.A.MacLeod
Roddy MacLeod Program UpdateThe ELD Program for the 1998 ASEE Conference in Seattle, Washington, June 28-July 1, is shaping up to be interesting and exciting, with a very full schedule. Technical session moderators have been hard at work obtaining commitments from excellent speakers; moderators of other activities are working to ensure their session will engage and interest you. I'm looking forward to the programs and activities already. But even more, I'm looking forward to meeting again with many of you, sharing experiences and new perspectives, discussing the challenges of engineering librarianship, and meeting new colleagues. If you haven't been to an Annual Conference yet, perhaps you'll consider joining us this year. There are events planned for informally meeting your colleagues, as well as the more formal programs. I hope you're beginning to make plans to attend. Some brief notes about changes and unofficial events. The Society-wide picnic will be held later on Sunday than usual, 7:00-9:00 pm. The Main Plenary will be on Tuesday, 10:30-Noon, rather than Monday. Mini-plenaries are still on Wednesday, 10:30-Noon. Please plan on staying through to the very end of the conference-- ELD is co-sponsoring a technical session on Aerospace Engineering Information with the Aerospace Engineering Division, scheduled at 4:30-6:00 pm on Wednesday. The Advance Program is usually sent with the February issue of the ASEE Prism and all official events will be listed there (as well as here!). Some unofficial events which will not be listed in the Advance Program include the 5 K run being planned by Kate Lee, the Monday informal lunch bunch groups coordinated by Locke Morrisey, and the Wednesday morning tour of the University of Washington Engineering Library. Watch for more informal social gatherings that are publicized closer to conference time. Also, I encourage all of you who attend the conference to sign up for the Annual Banquet on Tuesday evening. This conference highlight will be at TULIos, an established Seattle restaurant with excellent Italian fare and a delightful ambience. It is a ticketed event, so you'll need to select it as an added option when registering. The Banquet has always proved to be one of my favorite events, and I hope you join me, moderator Mel DeSart, and your other fellow ELD members for this enjoyable occasion.
With anticipation, 1998 ASEE Annual Conference June 28-July 1: ELD Program5K Run--Stay tuned for more information from moderator Kate Lee, University of Florida
Creating Your Own Web Page for Beginners
Advanced Home Page Creation--Forms, Frames, and Image Maps
Society-wide Picnic
ELD Get-Acquainted Meeting
ELD Informal Luncheon
Instructing in the Webbed Environment
ELD Poster Session
ABET Accreditation and the Library--Issues, Developments, and Concerns
Building Digital Libraries: Theory, Practice and Implications
Information Technology Update: Push versus Pull on the World Wide Web
ELD Annual Business Meeting
ELD Annual Banquet
ELD Extended Executive Committee Meeting/ Breakfast
ELD Extended Executive Commmittee Meeting II
TOUR of the University of Washington Engineering Library (and possibly other
UW libraries)
PIC IV Luncheon
ELD Professional Issues Discussion
Aerospace Engineering Information: How is it helping keep the competitive
edge? Call for 1998 Poster SessionShow off your latest project! Educate your colleagues with a display in the poster session for the upcoming ASEE conference in Seattle. Posters are easy to create and allow for informal discussions on topics of interest to you. Poster session concepts --titles and abstracts-- are required by January 6, 1998 in order to be listed in the final program. Contact Catherine Soehner at soehner@cats.ucsc.edu or 408-459-2554
Regards, Officer Nominees SoughtThe ELD Nominating Committee invites YOU to send nominations for two positions: ELD Secretary/Treasurer and ELD Director. Some questions about specific duties of these positions may be answered in the ELD Bylaws; other questions may be directed to one of the committee members. Please submit the names of possible nominees to any member of the committee. A list of candidates for the two positions will be published in the May, 1998, ELD Newsletter. Nominations will also be accepted from the floor at the ELD Business Meeting during the 1998 ASEE Annual Conference.
Committee members are: Christy
Hightower (619-534-1216) or chightower@ucsd.edu,
Ann Ward (909-869-4670) or
aeward@csupomona.edu and Andy Stewart
(573-341-4007) or astewart@umr.edu. Union List Subcommittee Seeking Members
It is time to start thinking about the 4th edition of the Union List of Technical
Reports, Standards and Patents in Engineering Libraries. If you would like
to assist in gathering data for the new edition, please contact
Linda Musser, Penn State University, 105
Deike Building, University Park PA 16802; 814-863-7073; Lrm4@psu.edu. The (Happy) Peripatetic LibrarianUpdate your ELDNET directories. I have been lured away from Southern California by two words: chemistry and instruction. Well, make that three words: chemistry, instruction, and Stanford. My name is Stella Ota. I'm a newly-minted librarian. For the last four years, I have been a paraprofessional in the Caltech Library System while simultaneously attending a distance education program offering an MLIS out of San Jose State University to students in Southern California. That is, I worked in the Los Angeles area while attending classes offered from a school in the San Francisco area. Talk about burning the candle at both ends! I graduated in May 1997 having never set foot on the San Jose campus. I am now nearly 400 miles up the coast from where I had been, in a place of many names, "NoCal," "The Peninsula," "The Silicon Valley," "The Bay Area," "The Farm," and perhaps definitively, "Stanford." I was lured here not only by the instruction work (I taught for two years in a Japanese high school), but also by the opportunity to work with the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Library. Who* has not felt the sting of anxiety when a patron came up to you with a chemical structure? The "reference interview" becomes babblespeak in one's resulting panic. I may be crazy but diving into perhaps the greatest challenge** in science and engineering librarianship also drew me to this place. (Plus, they offered me the job!) I fill the role of Reference and Instructional Services Librarian for the Science and Engineering Resources Group (SERG) of the Stanford University Libraries (SUL). Quite a mouthful! Although I lead a rather peripatetic working life, moving throughout the day from one building and one library to another, I don't think a new librarian with the full spectrum of science and engineering librarianship before her could ask for anything more. For Fall Quarter, I find myself in Chem/ChemE in the mornings and Engineering in the afternoons. I'm not sure what subject emphasis will be on my plate next term, but I look forward to working with every single subject library in time. I want to learn it all! Sigh. I suppose you all thought the same thing when you first started, and then realized you were going to die trying and chose to live instead? Something to contemplate as I sip a bit of caffeine and watch the rain flow in patterns of mathematical brilliance down the red tile roofs of the main quad. Although, come to think of it, the patterns look more like those IR and NMR spectra that the O-chem students keep showing me.
Yours truly, *Qualification: Chemistry Librarians who are also chemists may not understand this anxiety.
**Qualification: Chem/ChemE is a challenge to the non-chemist. But the grey
literature of engineering has certainly moved up in my estimation since my
arrival at Stanford! ELD Publications Committee, Subcommittee on Literature Guides(Editors note: In the September/October newsletter, the chairs/co-chairs of the Publications Committee and Literature Guides Subcommittee were transposed. Please note that Godlind Johnson is the chair of the Publications Committee and Sheila Curl and Kelly Jordan are the co-chairs of the Subcommittee on Literature Guides.) Any ELD member who is interested in serving on the Literature Guide Subcommittee or who has an idea for a new literature guide, please contact us.
Sheila Curl, co-chair; Kelly Jordan, co-chair; Homer I. Bernhardt Distinguished Service AwardEach year at the ASEE Annual Conference the Engineering Libraries Division presents an award, consisting of a plaque, recognizing work that contributes to the advancement and development of excellence in engineering libraries. Please consider nominating a colleague for this award. The deadline for nominations is January 15, 1998. Details are given below. Eligibility - Membership in ASEE is not an eligibility requirement for this award. How to Nominate - Award nominations must include the name, title, and contact information of the nominee and nominator, nomination rationale statement, and a curriculum vitae of the nominee. The rationale statement should not exceed 700 words and should clearly indicate why the candidate is being nominated for this award. Letters of support from individuals besides the person making the nomination may be included.
Deadline - Nominations, along with all required materials, must be
received by January 15, 1998, by the Awards Committee chair:
Call for Nominations --ASEE/ELD Best Reference Work AwardThe purpose of this award is to honor the best new reference work in engineering information. Reference works must have been published or released in 1996 or later and should represent a significant contribution to the field of engineering information. Works in all media are eligible. Send nominations to Linda Musser, address above.
Call for nominations for the ASEE/ELD Best Paper Award
This award is to recognize the best paper in engineering information published
in the previous two years. The paper must have been published in 1996 or
later and should represent a significant contribution to the field of engineering
information. The paper should be scholarly, show evidence of thorough research,
documentation, and critical evaluation. It should be clearly written and
well-organized. Longer works relating to engineering information may be
considered for this award. Send nominations to Linda Musser, address above.
Linda Hall Library Receives Major GiftThe library is the recipient of a major gift--one-half million dollars for the purchase of rare books in the history of science--from a couple who have been interested in the library for a long time. Mrs. C. Humbert Tinsman, Sr., and the late Mr. Tinsman have provided a gift of one-half million dollars to the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering, and Technology. The Tinsmans' generosity will provide $50,000 annually for ten years and is restricted to the purchase of rare books for the Library's widely recognized special collection of rare books in the history of science and technology. The gift will supplement the Library's current commitments to the growth of the History of Science Collection and will make possible the acquisition of major items that might not ordinarily be obtained. The History of Science Collection is strong in primary sources from the 15th century to the present, and forms a solid foundation for the study of modern science. More than 6,000 rare items are located in the History of Science Collection and, with other historical and current collections in the Library, represent the continuity of more than five centuries of scientific thought. The collection includes such works as the first edition of Isaac Newton's Principia (1687), which introduced the law of universal gravitation; the first English edition of Euclid's classic work in mathematics, the Elements of Geometry (1570); Nicolas Copernicus's work on the structure of the solar system, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543); and Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). The Tinsmans have long been associated with the Linda Hall Library. The Tinsmans firmly support the mission of the Linda Hall Library--"to develop, organize, preserve, and provide access to a pre-eminent collection...." Their hope is that their gift will ensure the continuation of a strong tradition of excellence by providing significant materials in the history of science for researchers world-wide to use in furthering our understanding of the world around us. The Library is honored to be the recipient of the Tinsmans' generosity and also of the trust they have expressed in the Library's programs and services. The Linda Hall Library is the largest privately funded library of science, engineering, and technology in North America. It is free and open to the public and serves a world-wide community of library users. The Library is located at 5109 Cherry Street, Kansas City, Missouri.
Kathleen L. Alshouse
alshousk@lhl.lib.mo.us |
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