DBIO program ideas

DBIO hasn't made any firm decisions yet, but here are a few topics that have come up in our discussions that haven't been mentioned in other posts.

Mary Ellen Bates contacted us about doing a program; her suggested topics included search tips, art of negotiation, beating Google, or alternative search engines.

Tony Stankus is interested in doing a possibly 2 hour program on biological journals aimed at new librarians, including a segment on Open Access.

Two other DBIO members would like to see a program on recent legislature dealing with open access and open data.

Other ideas, not thought out in any detail, include:

Get a Wikipedia editor to come
Take lead in getting an environmentalist for the spotlight speaker-Bjorn Lomborg (Skeptical Environmentalist), David Suzuki (environmentalist/geneticist from Vancouver), Patrick More (Greenpeace)
Mount St. Helens
Environmental toxicology/endocrine disruptors
Fish farming
The tension between rare species protection and censorship in reporting locations
Get a speaker from Seattle's Allen Institute for Brain Science

We would probably be interested in taking the lead with something with bioinformatics.

Master List of Program Suggestions

Best Science Books of the New Millennium—This could be done by discussing highlights from book lists such as the following:

Discover Magazine’s Greatest Science Books of All Time: http://discovermagazine.com/2006/dec/25-greatest-science-books/

Popular Science’s highly rated popular science books;

http://www.popularscience.co.uk/best.htm

NPR’s Best Books of 2006:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6598786

Amazon’s Best Science Books of 2000

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Science-Books-of-2000/lm/1VSDJ8SSEEG47

Digital Libraries (or Open Source) in Science and Technology

Discussion of the trends and current laws (http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/frpaa/), as well as the digital libraries/repositories in science such as: National Science Digital Library: http://nsdl.org/ and the Public Library of Science: http://www.plos.org/about/index.html. Many more are listed through the Open Directory of Digital http://www.opendoar.org/

Scoop on Science Search Engines

Discussion on usability/indexing of sites such as http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/, http://www.science.gov/ and http://www.scinet.cc/.

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Finding Grey Literature in the Sciences

Discuss the reason and role of grey literature, as well as sources for finding this literature. Sites like the following could be discussed: http://www.glisc.info,

Recruiting Science and Technology Librarians

We could ask Mary Frances Lembo to discuss her article: http://www.istl.org/03-spring/refereed1.html, as well as have other guest speakers discuss why they became a science librarian, and tactics for recruiting in this area of librarianship. There is also a forthcoming book on this topic: http://www.haworthpress.com/store/PDFFiles/ForReps/Kreitz-RecruitingTraining.pdf, it would be great if we could get one of the editors (Patricia Kreitz an SLA member) to come speak to us.

The New Science and Technology Librarian

For those new to librarianship or just new to science/technology librarianship—ways to get acquainted and stay informed.

Institutional Depositories

Case studies from librarians at institutions who have depositories. Delve into the what, where, when and why.

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Future roles for librarianship/traditional roles no longer needed

This topic would be of interest to a lot of different divisions since it is more inclusive than some of the “strictly science” topics. This session could discuss how some jobs have been outsourced or not filled after the person left, and new positions created, such as institutional depository director, etc.

Google Scholar, Open Worldcat, Google Books, etc.-Uses and implications for subscription databases and libraries. I think this is another one that could attract a large crowd. If we could get someone from Google to present, and someone from OCLC and possibly a panel of different librarians to discuss the repercussions, I think this would be quite an interesting session. (Might be a topic for the Academic Roundtable)

New Technologies for Keeping Current with Science/Technology Resources

(Specific blogs, podcasts, wiki’s and rss feeds) Could include case studies from specific libraries who have implemented these technologies to assist researchers. We are doing a similar CE (pay course) and poster session on this topic this year.

Technology and Libraries

(what librarians can learn from scientific disciplines who use technologies for other purposes: games, remote labs, haptic devices, geowalls, etc...) I went to an Educause Learning Initiative recently that talked about a few of these things, as well as

Second Life (very popular with everyone).

There have been a number of interesting articles on integrating

reference and circulation desks (along the lines of the future of the

reference desk): http://www.istl.org/07-winter/article2.html

Debating the future of the reference desk (attachment).

This was suggested as a HOT topic by Michelle Wilde, who is program planner for Denver. Her Library is going this direction. Would this be the start of another sequence of continuing topics, such as our series on Repositories? Also a good subject for the Academic Round table session http://acrlblog.org/2007/03/26/debating-the-future-of-the-reference-desk/

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Citation tracking / analysis with VENDOR UPDATE (S-T UNIQUE)

I have been working on the idea of searching for citations (Carol Lucke) as either a program in 2008 or an preconference workshop and have discussed this with Valrie. I have contacted Gail Golderman and Bruce Connolly who published a Library Journal article this year, " I am still waiting to hear from Gail and Bruce (Gail Golderman and Bruce
Connolly who published a Library Journal article this year,
"Who Cited This?" http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6404147.html).

I also contacted Dana Roth, who is pretty well known on the Chemistry list
serves. He did an article for Current Science in 2005 listing all the
other sources for gathering citations to authors' works. (He has been urged
to update the article and I am hoping he will before the 2008 conference).
The article can be read here:
http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/nov102005/1531.pdf

He has definitely committed to taking part in our program! Looks like this
one is moving ahead.

SEARCHING 101 – Topic to be decided by MF and James

I have emailed James Manasco and Mary Frances Lembo who are doing the Searching 101 series. Mary Frances has responded that she is willing to do another session, but would like topics. James has not responded as yet. (I also suggested that they consider doing a session as CE or CLICK U.)

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Gaming Session: The PAM and Military Divisions had also been talking about co-sponsoring a "gaming" session like Valrie described

Aggregated RT session?

Newcomers Event?

Program ideas from other divisions who are looking for co-sponsors include:

Electronic Notebooks - CHEM

Speed Networking - CHEM

Bioinformatics - PAM

Topics discussed, but not yet being sponsored - Data/text mining and

Toxicity/property searching

Networking After hours

Newcomers event (?)

All Sciences Reception

Happy Hour

SCI-FI open house (IT, ENGR)

Blog Without a Library

Interesting ideas for better conferences:
http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/?p=266

Conference Planning Blog

Feel free to send me any suggestions for template changes. Any links you would like to see added?