PAM Wide Roundtable
Nancy Anderson
The PAM Wide Roundtable was convened by me five years ago for the first
time. Thirty five members attended to talk about issues which were common
to all of us and for which there was never enough time to discuss at the
annual business meeting. It's amazing to re-read the notes of that first
meeting as many of the issues haven't changed a bit.
This year eighty-one members gathered to hear the chairs of various PAM
Committees report on recent activities of the Division and gave them input
and guidance. I will summarize the reports presented at the PAM Wide
Roundtable here, but the complete texts can be found at the PAM website
http://www.sla.org/division/dpam/div.html#program
The Roundtable started off with a big band with a door prize drawing for
the electronic CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. If my memory serves
me correctly, Ellen Bouton was the lucky winner.
2. Karen Croneis
(kcroneis@bama.ua.edu) provided an update on the PAM Division
Strategic Plan.
The purpose of this session was to get feedback on the draft strategic
plan. Karen Croneis reported on the survey data analysis conducted by the
1998/99 PAM Strategic Planning Committee. Using a four point scale
(4=Great to 1=Poor), PAM services and programs were "pretty good" overall,
with PAMnet rating the highest at 3.7. Now we knoe how terrific it is!
Because the survey was conducted in February and asked respondents to
remember back 8 months to the previous conference, the Strategic Planning
Committee felt that more reliable information might be useful. So, at the
PAM-sponsored programs in Minneapolis, participants were asked to complete
feedback forms.
In analyzing the survey data, the Committee found that all members agree
that the biggest professional challenge is "keeping up". The Committee
also found differences in member satisfaction and involvement was based on
three areas: number of years in PAM, work environment, and conference
attendance. Newer members are, in general, less satisfied and involved
with PAM programs and services than longer-term members. Likewise, those
in non-academic work settings and members who attend conference
infrequently (or not at all) are also less satisfied/involved than their
colleagues in academia and members who are regular conference goers,
respectively.
The Strategic Planning Committee identified four areas of need which
translated into the four goal areas of the proposed strategic plan:
The Strategic Planning Committee's Report and Analysis as well as the PAM
Strategic Plan are currently available at
http://www.lib.purdue.edu/fusion/PAMdraft/. The detailed survey
results are at
http://bama.ua.edu/~kcroneis/pamrslt.html
Comments from a lively discussion concerning the proposed strategic plan
include:
Next steps for the Strategic Plan and for the Strategic Planning
Committee (1999/2000):
If you are interested in serving on the 1999/2000 Strategic Planning
Committee, consider joining us. Please contact Karen Croneis to find out
more about the committee--or if you have questions about the Strategic
Plan. Thank you.
3. Christina Louis
(chris@iiap.ernet.in) spoke about PAM-APF, the
ASIA/PACIFIC REGIONAL FORUM.
This project is a regional forum for librarians and information
specialists with an interest in PAM subjects. Special attention has
been placed on fostering information exchange among colleagues and
informing the publishers of technological weaknesses in the developing
world, especially in the Asia/Pacific Region. We believe that PAM - APF
will be a very useful medium for networking, but it will need much
publicity within the developing countries to enable our colleagues there
to become aware of its existence and use it effectively as PAM members do
with PAMnet.
During the past two years PAM's International Relations Committee has
been working with the Australian Libraries and Information Association in
the formation of PAM-APF as an extension to PAM. Countries covered in
the Asia/Pacific Region are Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea,
India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand,
Vietnam.
Activities of PAM-APF include (1) Letters of invitation and questionnaire
were sent in Nov. 1998 to 425 librarians and information specialists in
the Asian, Australasian, Pacific and Latin American regions, (2) a website
for PAM-APF was established in April 1999, (3) a discussion list was
established and now has participants from 15 different countries, (4)
PAM-APF will hold its first meeting as a focus session at the conference "
Strait to the Future" to be held in Hobart, Austarlia, in August 1999, (5)
the PAM International Membership Award has been established to enable an
information professional from a developing country to participate in the
SLA annual conference as a member of the PAM for a 2-year period.
PAM-APF distributed a questionnaire as they needed to ascertain the level
of access to computers in order to enable effective communication, to
ascertain what level of Web access our colleagues in the developing
countries have (and so inform publishers of the basic access problems that
information professionals and researchers may be having with electronic
databases and online resources), and to ascertain if libraries in the
developing countries were interested in forming a consortia.
There were 46 responses from 557 surveyed. Analysis of the questionnaire
shows:
Computer access
Web Access
Electronic Journals
Consortium
In India we already have a Forum of Astronomy libraries formed in 1979,
called FORSA (Forum for Resource Sharing in Astronomy). We were pleased
to be invited to join PAM-APF as it was an opportunity for us to interact
with like-minded librarians outside our country, not only with astronomy
libraries, but also with Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science
Libraries. Also, this was a good opportunity for us to form a more formal
forum within the country and also to represent FORSA in the Asia/Pacific
Regional forum. Since India is a developing country, we constantly work
toward improving the technology and infrastructure to meet the demands of
our researchers within the country by taking the lead from the developed
countries.
Though FORSA is small, comprised of only 9 astronomy libraries, we are
working towards forming a consortium. I would like to mention here, that
as a preliminary attempt, we have been able to convince the Kluwer
publishers to consider our present FORSA forum a consortium. Thus, we
have been granted free access to Kluwer Online journals with the print
subscription. In future, we hope that we will be able to benefit more and
more from the PAM-APF, by participating in its discussion list, to have
a better exchange of communication, and to fully utilize the resources
available within the forum member libraries.
4. Michael Fosmire
(fosmire@physics.purdue.edu) reported on the P-A-M
Mentoring Subcommittee (MS).
In the course of the Strategic Planning survey analysis, the Mentoring
Subcommittee (MS) found a desire, especially among the newer members, to
develop a mentoring program. Although PAM members are notorious for their
openness and inclusiveness, newer members still want help in being
introduced to division members and figuring out how the division works.
Furthermore, as members are starting out in the field, they are trying to
master the subject literature, often with no one else locally that has any
experience in that area.
The Mentoring Committee was commissioned in May 1999 to try to meet these
needs by facilitating the formation of mentoring relationships. So far, we
have three broad programs that we would like to implement.
First, a Buddy Program was launched right before the conference. It is a
short-term relationship that seeks to get our newer members up to speed on
who belongs to the division, how to get involved in the division, and how
to effectively "do" the conference by pairing them with an experienced
PAM member. We solicited volunteers for each half of the buddy pair and
gave them some possible topics/activities to discuss and do together as
ways to get things rolling. We will get feedback from our first year's
effort and build on our successes.
Second, traditional mentoring relationships. These are more long-term
relationships and are geared toward helping the mentee grow professionally
as a librarian and within the discipline. The mentor can offer a larger
perspective of the field, expertise in Division and subject areas, and an
outside perspective (from your local institution) on general librarianship
topics, as appropriate.
Our goal within the traditional mentoring relationships is to facilitate
the creation of the relationship, and some oversight into its upkeep. Our
role is to keep the conversation going: provide topics for conversation,
suggestions of what kinds of things mentors and "mentees" do,
what they can ask of each other, and generally what the potential is of
the relationship. The onus in on both the mentor and "mentee"
to ask questions and to keep the dialogue going so that learning can
occur.
Third, and this applies to all levels of librarians, we want to form an
expertise database so anyone with any question can consult with a
self-identified "expert" in that area. Instead of relying on chance to
connect people with expertise and needs, the database would help make
those connections in a systematic way. You can also put yourself into the
database as an "inexpert" in need of guidance, so, you can either browse
to find someone with a need, or someone with a skill.
5. Donna Cromer
(dcromer@unm.edu) reported on her analyis of PAMnet for
the months of Aug-Dec 98
A simple analysis of PAMnet was undertaken in order to discern exactly how
busy the Listserv is. I saved all 316 messages posted between August 1,
1998 and December 31, 1998. Some of the things I looked at are: type of
message, day of the week, number of posts per day, membership in PAM, and
what country the poster is in.
Categories for the type of post are taken, with permission, from the
following article: Duda, Andrea L., Rosemary L. Meszaros, and James W.
Markham. 1997. "A Month in the Life of a Mailing List: Communication Among
Science and Technology Librarians." Issues in Science and Technology
Librarianship (Summer): article 1.
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/97-summer/article1.html
Highlights of the survey:
23% or 72 announcements relevant to readers of the list--Announcements of
all kinds including recommendations of articles to read or web sites to
visit, messages forwarded from other lists, reports of meetings, etc.
12% or 38 collection announcements--Announcing new books, journals,
CD-ROMs, newsletters, new or updated websites from vendors or
librarians.
11% or 34 reference questions--Questions requiring an expertise to answer,
such as those asked at a reference desk.
10% or 33 Collection-related discussion postings, e.g., serials
prices.
8% or 24 Collection queries, e.g., questions relating to the purchase or
use of materials.
7% or 23 Duplicates offered or wanted--"Giveaways" usually resulting from
weeding or gifts. Duplicates wanted are usually items not received through
subscription or depository programs.
With all the reports presented at the roundtable, we didn't have time to
pursue other topics, e.g., SLA's 1999 preliminary program and the PAM
Bulletin: Paper and/or Electronic? which PAM members had proposed adding
to the agenda. Perhaps they'll be resolved by next year or we can
schedule discussion at the 2000 Pamwide Roundtable.
ndanders@uiuc.edu
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