April 15, 2004

So, how do we all keep up to date in science and librarianship? A complex question with a lot of different answers. Recently Michael Leach of Harvard surveyed the PAM membership to get a idea. Michael has kindly allowed me to post the results of his informal survey as he emailed them to PAM members:


Below is a summary of the replies I received to my posting on "Keeping
up to date" with our fields. I thank the many of you who provided lists
and comments, which I condensed below.

A few notes:

1) It appears that use of blogs are on the increase, especially those
blogs with aggregate information from a number of resources.

2) Many complained about the signal-to-noise ratio on many lists, and
about email spam in general.

3) Finally, many noted the need to read more, but time constraints and the
ever increasing volume of materials make this difficult. It is clear we
will need better tools and resources in the future to deal with these
issues.

Perhaps PAM should examine and then consider the possibility of
creating an information aggregator for the Division membership. RSS feeds
and blogs are certainly two IT mediums to consider for such a project,
after a user needs study is conducted. Although, perhaps, blogs like STLQ
already fulfill this niche for members.

The summary is broken down into two sections: I) LIS Resources, and
II) PAM-SciTech Resources. Within each section, resources are grouped by
medium type. Items with an asterisk (*) indicate a resource recommended
by numerous folks.

If you did not respond originally, but would like to send your
suggestions along to me now, please do so. Thanks.

Michael Leach
Physics Research Library, Harvard University
mrleach@fas.harvard.edu or leach@physics.harvard.edu
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I) LIS Resources

Blogs:

commons-blog (http://www.info-commons.org/blog/)
Confessions of a Science Librarian * (http://jdupuis.blogspot.com/)
EngLib * (http://www.englib.info/)
Information Literacy weblog (http://ciquest.shef.ac.uk/infolit/)
Internet Scout weblog * (http://scout.wisc.edu/Weblog/)
Lessig Blog (http://www.lessig.org/blog/)
Librarians' Index to the Internet (http://lii.org/)
LISNews * (http://www.lisnews.com/)
LibraryCog (http://librarycog.uwindsor.ca/)
Open Access News * (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html)
Peter Scott's Library Blog (http://blog.xrefer.com/)
ResearchBuzz * (http://www.researchbuzz.com/)
ResourceShelf * (http://www.resourceshelf.com/)
SEPW - Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog
(http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepw.htm)
Shifted Librarian (http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/)
STLQ - The SciTech Library Question * (http://stlq.info/)
TVC Alert - Research News (http://www.virtualchase.com/tvcalert/)

Journals:

Ariadne (http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/)
American Libraries
ASEE Prism
D-Lib Magazine * (http://www.dlib.org/)
High Energy Physics Libraries Webzine (http://library.cern.ch/HEPLW/)
Information Research: an international electronic journal
(http://informationr.net/ir/)
Information Outlook
Information Today
Internet Resources Newsletter * (http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/irn.html)
Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship * (http://www.istl.org/)
JoDI: Journal of Digital Information (http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/)
Journal of Academic Librarianship
Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology
(JASIST)
Online
Portal: Libraries and the Academy
(http://muse.jhu.edu.ezp1.harvard.edu/journals/pla/)
Science & Technology Libraries
Scout Report (http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/Current/)
Searcher

Lists:

CLIS List (University of Maryland College of Library & Information Science
list)
eld-l
eril-l *
infolit-l
liblicense-l *
reedelsevier
SLA-DC
SLA-PAM *
SLA-scitech
sts-l

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II) PAM-SciTech Resources

Journals:

Annals of Improbably Research (http://www.improbable.com/)
Chemical & Engineering News
Communications of the ACM
Discover
The Engineer
E-Streams
IEEE newsletter
Inspec newsletter
Nature *
New Scientist
Newspapers (a number of different ones, including New York Times)
Physical Review Focus (http://focus.aps.org/)
Physics Today *
Physics Web
Physics World
ProQuest newsletter
Science *
Scientific American *
Technology Review (http://www.techreview.com/) (also has a blog service)

Lists:

National Academies (US) What's New (http://www.nas.edu/mail.html)

Other:

EEVL - Internet Guide to Engineering, Mathematics, and Computing
(http://www.eevl.ac.uk/)
E4 (http://www.e4engineering.com/)
EurekAlert (http://www.eurekalert.org/)
ltsn - Learning and Teaching Support Network (http://www.ltsn.ac.uk/) (See
various "Subject Centres" for specific resources)
PSIgate - Physical Sciences Information Gateway
(http://www.psigate.ac.uk/newsite/)
Science Daily (http://www.sciencedaily.com/)
Topix.net (Science/Technology News)
Wired News Technology (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/)

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