LISNews: Librarian News

There are many studies that indicate that the number of reference transactions are declining at the desk.

For example,
7th Annual Virtual Reference Desk Conference

abstract by Lisa Horowitz, Jennifer Harter
titled "Planning, Writing and Implementing a Reference Assessment Plan" include
'Reference services and staff are scrutinized as budgets tighten in response to events such as rising serials costs and declining reference desk statistics'.

My observations are somewhat different: although the number may be smaller, the length of the reference transaction has increased due to the increased complexity of various information tools from variety of resources. Students contact subject consultants directly for more expert help. I am the engineering librarian at Drexel, and I have app. 80-90 consultations in my office, through email, virtual chat, over the phone and at informal gatherings.

What do you all think? Your experiences?

U.S. patents (in PDF)

PAT2PDF

-download a copy of a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Free Patents online

Free Patents Online

FreePatentsOnline.com provides fast, easy-to-use access to millions of patents Has anyone compared these two sites with USPTO's web site? Can pat2pdf and other such sites on patents be considered reliable? Without much information about the author and when they are updated how do we know they are reliable?How far back can one access images of patents? Having the PDF version of the entire patent is nice and I think our facuty and students will appreciate it.

I am just wondering if there are any video games/virtual games available or someone designing them, to use them to teach and reinforce library skills. What got me into this was the presentation by Alane Wilson, at the IATUL conference that I attended this year in Quebec City.

Here is the link: http://www.iatul.org/conference/proceedings/vol15/ Alane's presentation: Wilson, Alane Reclaiming the Third Place: Libraries and their Communities in the Age of "Amazoogle" http://www.iatul.org/conference/proceedings/vol15/ PAPERS/wilson_IATUL.ppt

This presentation and Alane's talk motivated me to think about how libraries can target a new evolving population of gamers in teaching them information skills. I would love to hear your comments/ideas and thoughts about it.
Jay bhattjj@drexel.edu

Our poster and the hand out can be accessed at
http://eld.lib.ucdavis.edu/conf/ELD_Portland_calendar.pdf

Keep Up-To-Date Using Subject Specific Blogs, RSS Feeds, and Listservs, Bhatt, Peggy Dominy, Andrew Wheeler (handout)

There are some other interesting posters and papers which can be accessed from this site.

These include:
Digital Libraries for Engineering Education
Craig Beard

The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) – John Saylor

A Digital Library for Teaching and Learning Kinematics – John Saylor

NSDL 2nd Generation Mathematics Digital Library – Bill Mischo

The TeachEngineering Digital Library Collection: An Engineering Resource for K-12 – Jackie Sullivan
NEEDS—A Digital Library for Engineering Education at www.needs.org – Joe Tront

Vendor Partnerships with Engineering Libraries
Jay Bhatt

Partnering to Create a New Online Product – K. Clay, J. Luther (Morgan and Claypool)

Partnering with Knovel: Case Studies in Information Outreach –C. Paulsen, J. Bhatt, L. Dunn, A. Van Epps (paper)

A Successful Collaborative Partnership Among the Faculty and Librarians at Drexel University with IEEE – J. Bhatt, R. Berrington, A. Wheeler, R. Wolfish (paper)

The Role of Information in Innovation - Rusty Bausch, Elsevier

I am interested in starting a section on Science and Technology Libraries within LISNews. Being and engineering information services consultant and librraian, I am interested publishing and reading news items about developments in this type of a setting. For example, here is my blog http://englibrary.blogspot.com for engineering formation to our faculty and students.