PAM Bulletin: Vol. 32, No. 1

PAMnet News

More threads from the past quarter can be found in the PAMnet Discussion Archive at: http://listserv.nd.edu/archives/pamnet.html.

GENERAL: Google

Bob Michaelson posted an excerpt from the Chronicle of Higher Education, Google Teams Up With Colleges to Test Searches of Scholarly Materials, by Jeffrey R. Young http://chronicle.com/free/2004/04/2004040901n.htm. The story states that "Google, the popular search-engine company, has teamed up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 16 other universities around the world to provide a way to search the institutions' collections of scholarly papers, according to university officials." MacKenzie Smith, associate director of technology for MIT's libraries, said the search would probably be an option on Google's http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en advanced-search page. PAM members discussed further features of Google, and other Google news stories. Joe Kraus contributed an excerpt from the February 15, 2004 Sunday edition of the Washington Post, "Search For Tomorrow; We Wanted Answers, And Google Really Clicked. What's Next?" The story comments, "Only now in the bright light of the Google Era do we see how dim and gloomy was our pregooglian world. In the distant future, historians will have a common term for the period prior to the appearance of Google: the Dark Ages." Kraus had also done a search on :Google in Google, and discovered the parallel Google search universe at http://www.alltooflat.com/geeky/elgoog/, where you enter your Google search backwards. Elaine Adams pointed out that you can type in a phone number in the Google search box, and it will come up with the name and address of the owner, with a link (for personal phones) to Yahoo!Maps and MapQuest. Carol Hutchins pointed out Google does provide a Phonebook removal form for those who wish to do so. Deborah Kegel directed us to the April 2004 issue of ACM's Queue http://www.acmqueue.org/. The issue has several articles on search engines; what works, how they are written, new search engines you may not be familiar with, etc.

Open Access Journals/Books

George S. Porter posted that "Linda Yamamoto (Stanford) and Hema Ramachandran (Caltech) called my attention to more than two dozen books to which the American Mathematical Society has provided online, unencumbered access http://www.ams.org/online_bks/online_subject.html and referred to his previously posted message detailing multiple mathematics open access sites: http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0403&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=9547."

In separate postings Porter listed forthcoming Open Access biogeosciences journals, and commented, "In the rush toward Open Access journals and databases, it is easy to overlook unique source material to which academic libraries have easy access, namely theses and dissertations." He included a bibliography of links to some recent articles on Caltech's Electronic Theses and Dissertations Program (ETD) http://etd.caltech.edu, and information about the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations(NDLTD), http://www.ndltd.org/.

Porter also noted an ISI press release issued on April 15, http://www.isinet.com/press/2004/8221713 indicating that 191 of the more than 8700 titles indexed in Web of Science are Open Access journals. The full report, The Impact of Open Access Journals: A Citation Study from Thomson ISI, is available at: http://www.isinet.com/media/presentrep/acropdf/impact-oa-journals.pdf.

Porter also pointed us to articles in Frontline http://flonnet.com, "roughly the Indian equivalent of Time or Maclean's, had a couple of interesting pieces on free/open access to the scientific journal literature in the January 17 - 30, 2004 issue [Frontline 21(2)]." Porter also posted a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Press release: "The release states, PNAS Introduces Open Access Publishing Option. The PNAS now offers an open access publishing option. PNAS authors may opt to pay a $1000 surcharge to make their articles available for free via PNAS Online, http://www.pnas.org and PubMed Central, http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ immediately upon publication. PNAS will offer this open access option as an experiment until December 31, 2005."

In another posting Porter noted that Project Euclid http://ProjectEuclid.org has announced that it will host a "new, open access, digital journal from the Institute of Mathematical Statistics http://imstat.org/: Probability Surveys, with UC Berkeley's David Aldous as editor."

Flora Grabowska posted a link to OAIster, http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/ for one-stop shopping for open archives, theses, reports and more.

Steve Moss, IOP, posted, "Almost all of our papers are effectively 'open access' and available free of any cost for 30 days from the electronic publication date to anyone worldwide, whether or not their institution subscribes to any of our titles, http://www.iop.org/EJ/ejs_extra." Moss also pointed out that IOP "has entered into agreements with a number of philanthropic organizations who are supporting the need for research information in poor and developing countries. This enables researchers to access this content at very little or no cost." Moss stated that IOP continues to seek ways to expand the amount of open access we provide and are open to all viable suggestions from the library and physics communities."

Open Access continued to be a hot topic in Nashville, Porter posted links to Garrett Eastman's in-depth profile of the Open Access session at the SLA Conference in Nashville. Read Eastman's summary at: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2004_06_06_fosblogarchive.html - a108688214588722404 , alternatively http://tinyurl.com/3aqd7, on Open Access News http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html.

Blogging

Carol Hutchins posted an excerpt from the New York Times Circuits section 5/27/04, featuring PAM member Judy Matthews and Rich Wiggins.

Christina Pikas posted a survey and links to two of her blogs, Library Science Blog: http://christinaslibraryrant.blogspot.com and Sci/Tech Blog: http://cpikas.blogspot.com . Pikas wanted to know, "Are you blogging at work for knowledge management, marketing, or resource awareness?" The results were compiled and posted. Pikas reported that she received 17 responses. There were nine Personal/hobbyist bloggers, eight Library Science bloggers, and four Sci/Tech bloggers. Several responders reported using blogs instead of e-mails to convey information to campus departments. Sara Ranger reported that she uses a blog for "marketing, resource awareness and updates on changes in the library (we're in the middle of a building project)." Ranger blogs, "because the physics department doesn't interact with the library much but they want to know what's going on over here. I set up the blog so that they could check it on their own time instead of me sending out tons of email." Several responders are considering using blogs for new book announcements and library news announcements but haven't started yet.

Thank you APS!

The American Physical Society (APS) announces that prices will be decreased for 2005. http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0405&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=498.

Summary of Links

Google:

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0404&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=2966

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0404&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=3695

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0404&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=3804

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0404&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=3930