Computer Science Roundtable
Sara Tompson
(Report by Sara Tompson with additional information from Jane Kinkus, PAM Division. For SciTech, per request. NOTE: For succinctness, remarks are not attributed.)
The Science & Technology (SciTech) Division organized the Computer Science (CS) Roundtable this year; the Scitech and Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics (PAM) Divisions alternate this responsibility. Christine Whitaker, Science Librarian at the University of South Carolina, moderated. ACM was the vendor sponsor of this Roundtable. About 25 people were in attendance. Christine introduced the event as an informal issues discussion. The main discussions are organized by topic, below, roughly chronologically. Most were initiated by participants’ questions to others. The actual discussions were free-form, and threads were revisited.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science
What are participants doing about LNCS subscriptions -- print or online or both? Many have both formats, but there is a trend toward online only. There was also a trend with participants toward removal of print copies of this and other online series to “pageable”/requestable storage. The point was made that online subscriptions can really free up shelf space, a premium in many libraries; this is a library-generated reason to switch to online; users like online for the 24x7 access. Some libraries receive just parts of the series in print, and the whole set online; not all knew this was an option. Several complained that buying backfiles of monographic series when one owns the print is double-paying for the same content. Several remarked that online subscriptions often result in new awareness on users’ part, and then increased usage of the print versions. There was some discussion of problems with usability in the past, but the “new” interface on Springerlink seems to work well for most. It was noted that now that Landolt-Börnstein is on Springer, topical searches on Springerlink really yield more results. One person noted that LNCS is now available as an ebook on OCLC’s Netlibrary [confirmed later via Worldcat]. The discussion turned to the challenge of cataloging these and other electronic monographic series in online catalogs, and the fact those online vendors’ MARC records have not historically been that complete. It was noted that a fair amount of LNCS papers are on individuals’ servers and discoverable via Google searchers. Another had heard that about 15% of conference papers are free online.
Springer
Springer will roll out a new e-book product at ALA. There were questions about price/pricing schemes.
ACM Digital Library
How is usage? About 15% thought it was not as high as expected at their institutions. There was some discussion on the interface needing a usability upgrade. Several said an ACM representative at a session on Tuesday agreed the interface needs work, and said that it will be upgraded soon. According to some, in the past IEEE’s interface was worse than ACM’s, but more recently the situation reversed. It seems that many users in various institutions go to IEEE Xplore exclusively for CS topics, and forget about ACM. How many have the “ACM Guide to Computing Literature” in their subscriptions? It seems that more are getting the DL without the Guide, though not all knew this was an option. It seems that the default search parameter button is not that easy to change between including or excluding the Guide. Some would like to see the Guide added to Engineering Village 2 or IEEE Xplore. Journals and conference proceedings are bundled in ACM packages; many would like them split for subscription options. They may be bundled because of ACM’s affiliation with Sheridan Printing Company, which does the proceedings. Some would like to see a print-on-demand feature like IEEE has for Prepaid Order Plans (POP) for conference proceedings. [It was noted that one cannot get the full set of IEEE conference proceedings in print any longer.] All agreed that the ACM DL is pretty reasonably priced. The California Digital Library cataloged all the titles in the ACM DL on OCLC so good MARC records are available. Several questions arose about the product that no one could confirm. Jane Kinkus from Purdue, who is on the ACM Advisory Committee, offered to bring these questions to them and post answers on the PAM and Scitech lists: Is ACM OpenURL linking compliant? Are the Sig Graph multimedia publications that used to be on CD-ROM now on the Web? When is ACM going to stop producing the print versions of titles?
Citeseer
It seems that many CS faculty at many institutions use this free search engine (at Penn State) as the first step in CS literature searches. Not all knew about it. It is at: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/.
Grey Literature Preservation
Is anyone working on this? No. No one has time, though all agree a worthy project, as there is quite a bit in computing science.
Institutional Repositories
Who has a repository at their institution? 3-4 have active IRs, many others’ institutions are discussing. CS departments do tend to issue technical reports, and these can form the core of an IR. But CS departments often do not like off-the-shelf IR products, even Dspace, so may create their own setups, or have libraries create them from scratch. A different sort of set-up: Ohiolink’s “KnowledgeBank” is a statewide repository for M.S. and Ph.D. theses. arXiv.org works well for many computer scientists, and functions like a (nonlocal) IR. Note that an IR can fix the loss of intellectual output from conference presentations which are often essentially grey literature. “Discoverable” is now a frequently used term especially re documents behind firewalls (as in making them “discoverable” or not). Many IRs and the technical documents populating them are NOT discoverable from the public web. The DASER-2 conference last December had IRs as a key theme (http://www.daser.org/program.html); several participants attended. Some of the anecdotes shared there included a few places where deans or chairs of science or engineering schools had mandated repositories; more commonly libraries promote and establish IRs for campuses. It is difficult to mandate practices and products in academia, several noted. Per DASER discussions, both distributed and centralized models for IRs exist.
Plone
Several institutions, more often in CS departments, but sometimes in libraries, are using Plone, an open source content management and authoring system (http://plone.org/ ) to create servers, including for IRs, and even to write ebooks. One participant recently compared search results on Scopus vs. Web of Knowledge using the term “plone” and got more hits on Scopus. For a similar search on “podcast*” Scopus again had more results. Several thought that Scopus seems a better source for new concepts.
JSTOR
Several had heard that an engineering package of titles will be available on JSTOR, and it will include CS titles. Several noted the impetus for this is the JSTOR task force of ELD, the Engineering Libraries Division of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). It is still under discussion with JSTOR. Several had heard that “Science” magazine is pulling out of JSTOR and will be selling their own version of their backfiles. This was not discussed at the AAAS lunch at SLA, however. (This was not verifiable on the Science web site.) Another person had heard that Science’s own archive would “have more links” than the JSTOR version, but that would remain.
Ebooks
Do users like ebooks? Generally yes for handbooks, not so much for other types of titles, especially those that need to be studied in depth. Many do like ebooks for CS manuals because the print editions tend to get stolen. The concept of “opportunity cost” -- the value of the next best choice that one gives up when making a decision – can be important when considering ebooks, several averred. What does one lose when choosing an ebook over a print book? And, what does one gain? Safari Techbooks Online: Does anyone know the lag time before O’Reilly titles are available on Safari? It seems they come out earlier in print. No one knows. [Sara will endeavor to find out.] Several schools reset the time-out length on Safari, this can help better manage limited-seat subscriptions. Several had heard the ebook.com was going after O’Reilly texts. Are any CS departments funding Safari or other ebook subscriptions? Only one, at a special library. At several institutions, the CS departments are subscribing to books24x7.com; the libraries are not. It appears that Safari is quite focused on corporate packages, and some have heard that libraries are only a small set of their subscribers. It was suggested we have a Safari representative speak at the next CS Roundtable, as some institutions find it difficult to reach anyone at ProQuest that can answer Safari questions.
