PAM Physics Roundtable - Social Networking
Elaine Adams
June 5, 2007
Moderator: Kenn Harper
Facebook. YouTube. Second Life. Blogs and wikis. The internet is not just web pages and email anymore. It’s THE social venue for greeting friends and meeting new people. How are we using these and other Web 2.0 tools to reach our library community?
Four speakers held the attention of over 100 attendees at the Physics Roundtable as they presented how they
* use instant messaging to answer reference questions,
* develop community networks through companion web sites to scientific publications,
* reach out using blogs, listservs, and other internet tools.
Elizabeth Brown, Science Library Coordinator at Binghamton University, shared how her library implemented IM reference service. Her paper, “Connecting Students: Launching Instant Messaging Reference at Binghamton University”, available at http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00008769/
covers the process in more detail and is a worthwhile read if you are considering implementing an IM service. Most of the institutions represented by those in the room provide some sort of IM or digital reference service according to the show of hands.
Terry Hulbert, Head of e-Development & Strategy at IOP Publishing, shared his work in developing and maintaining the various subject based IOPP websites. In his talk, “Community Websites to Promote Communication and Networking,” he showed how the websites, built around a featured journal, provide rich content with research and industry news, links to recent articles in the field, products and services, and jobs. Although the websites have been in existence for some time, he and his team have been working to update and improve them. The most recent work has been to standardize the platforms, login and branding and to improve the relevance, interaction and links to other content.
For an overview of the various IOP sponsored web communities see: http://www.iop.org/aboutus/IOP_Publishing/Websites/page_7786.html
The final section of the roundtable, “Mind the Gap: Building Bridges between Physics Librarians and Physics Faculty” featured two speakers. Christina Pikas from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory presented her preliminary research on physics blogs. Before the 2005 Quantum Diaries blogging project there were only about 10 active physics bloggers, but after the formal end of the Quantum Diaries year, many bloggers continued. Now there are about 300 physics and science related blogs. These blogs run the gamut from informational to forums for issues or personal rants. You can find a short list of physics blogs at http://del.icio.us/cpikas/physics. ArXiv.org has developed Trackbacks, a method for recording what papers in arXiv.org have been linked on a web site (see http://arxiv.org/tb/recent). A community of bloggers, BlogTogether, has organized an annual Science Blogging Conference held in the Triangle region of North Carolina each year. For more information on BlogTogether, see their website at http://wiki.blogtogether.org/blogtogether/show/HomePage. Christine has posted a link to her presentation slides and notes from the roundtable on her blog at http://christinaslibraryrant.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html .
Pat Viele, Physics and Astronomy Librarian at Cornell, builds bridges to her faculty, students and other librarians by sharing interesting websites through her blog “Physics Information Fluency” (http://physicsinformationfluency.blogspot.com/), her listserv “Pat’s Picks”, and her Connotea library at http://www.connotea.org/user/pviele. But another great source of networking for Pat is her involvement with the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). In her work with the Professional Concerns Committee, she collects web sites in direct response to faculty needs, for instance Lesson Plans (http://ia.usu.edu/viewproject.php?project=ia:3955) and Professional Development Opportunities for Science Teachers (http://ia.usu.edu/viewproject.php?project=ia:3981). Of course, all her electronic outreach is in complement with her in-person collaboration with faculty such as the Physics 213 course she developed with Dr. Richard Wheeler (http://istl.org/06-summer/article2.html).
This year’s Physics Roundtable was a full session with lots of great information and ideas. Thanks to Kenn Harper for organizing the session and our sponsors IET/Inspec and World Scientific for their support.
