"Metadata for the Sciences" Worskshop Scheduled

Our working session on science-specific metadata issues will be held Thursday December 16, 2010 from 9:30am to 1:00pm at Wooster. Catalina Oyler, Meghan Frazer, and Emily Haddaway will be joining us. Plan to bring your laptop or contact Jess for a loaner.

Nov 15 video lunch

Topics discussed included:

• NSF Open Data / Data Management requirements
• Springer Protocols as possible OhioLINK addition vs. Current Protocols - how does content differ?
• Collection Development/acquisiton practices- creative uses of Gobi and advantages on on-site approval
• Possbilility of consortial discount for Annual Reviews online
• Megameeting vs. Elluminate
• FOSciLs metadata meeting to be held in December at Wooster. Catalina and Meghan will attend - date to be doodle-determined.

Teleconference underway!

The FOSciLs meet through DimDim teleconference today, and were disappointed to realize that the free version does not permit video projection for each participant and only 4 simultaneous audio channels if using the microphone feature.  We switched to the teleconference option, and attempted to use the whiteboard function to take notes.  Inputting text was very awkward, however - the system continually jumped to the next line after just a few characters had been typed.  We abandoned the visual aspect of the conference after trying to view a Web page that required adobe flash, which caused some participants' windows to lock up on an error message.

In short:  the free version of DimDim is not a useful tool for looking at, talking to, and sharing a common workspace among a group of individuals at multiple locations!

Alison will ask Catalina for assistance using Megameeting during our next videoconference, scheduled for Monday, September 27, at 12:30pm.

Despite the technical difficulties, we spent a good hour and more sharing information about the OhioLINK CIRM math group meeting - one of the most interesting tidbits shared from that meeting was the announcement that Elsevier will make Scopus available to all of OhioLINK for the next three years, as it turns on access to the sciencedirect journal archives.  We would like more details.

Digital projects already selected for funding at each campus were reviewed, as well as sharing information on projects still in the planning stage.  We also discussed the upcoming ALAO Annual Conference, where several of us will be making presentations or giving a poster session, and briefly shared our impressions of the discovery layer products demonstrated at Wooster earlier this month.  Deb will share her notes from the teleconference with the other participants (Aimee Jenkins, Karen Gordon, Jessica Clemons, Moriana Garcia, Alison Ricker)

FOSciLs Meet at Kenyon

We had a productive meeting/workshop friday afternoon, April 30 at Kenyon. We shared our status in developing individual digital projects with faculty and discussed projects for collaboration. Several of us have projects in the initial stage of development. We see areas for collaboration with our herbaria, greenhouses, and ecological preserves and will each be talking with people on our own campuses within these areas to initially survey what we may have to work with.

Librarians demonstrated their use of Moodle, Woodle, LibGuides, Druple, and Blackboard as we discussed our various strategies for subject-specific library instruction. Using RSS feeds from Consort for the development of targeted new item lists was also demonstrated.

Pros and cons of RefWorks, EndNote, EndNote Web, Zotera and Mendeley were discussed as we shared our experiences in their usage.

Web of Knowledge. Web of Science, and Biosis Previews tips and tricks and recent changes were shared and we discussed how we handle SciFinder and its instruction on our campuses.

We came away energized and inspired by the good ideas and practices of our colleagues!

Thanks to Aimee and Karen for hosting us and to the Kenyon College Library for covering our delightful lunch at the Kenyon Inn.

FOSciLs Workshop Planned

FOSciLs are planning a face-to-face mini FOScils workshop for Friday April 30, 2010. We will be sharing our individual NGL project status, exploring areas for a collaborative "science" project and sharing strategies for subject-specific library instruction. Location to be determined.

April 5 meeting

The next FOSciLs video conference will be Monday April 5 at 12:15. We will use the same Elluminate Live web conference link we've been using. A call for agenda items will go out several days before the meeting.

FOSciLs meet by video link

FOSciLs (Five colleges of Ohio Science Librarians) are meeting by video link, using Elluminate, on March 1.  We are discussing use of the Group Discussion blog.  This is our second meeting by Elluminate, and we intend to meet monthly to share information with each other regarding digital projects as well as other information of common interest.