News

Physical Sciences Reading Room to close

News

Physical Sciences Reading Room to close

27-Oct-2009

As part of a campus planning initiative to make more effective use of limited university resources, including space on central campus, the ISU Library will close the Physical Sciences Reading Room (PSRR) at the end of fall semester. The PSRR is located in 208 Office and Laboratory (O&L) Building. The unit's last day of operation will be Friday, December 18, 2009. After that date, PSRR collections will be integrated with the collections of Parks Library, and all associated services will be provided by Parks Library staff.

The most heavily-used PSRR collections, including currently received journals and popular journal backfiles, will be integrated as quickly as possible into corresponding collections in the Parks Library. Less heavily used items will need to be stored indefinitely in a closed stack until space can be made available in the Parks Library. At all times, the Library's online catalog will accurately reflect a title's current location/availability. Items in temporary storage will be retrieved by library staff.

Heather Lewin (hslewin@iastate.edu; 294-1004) and Steve McMinn (hsmcminn@iastate.edu, 294-4789), from the Library's Science & Technology Department, will continue to serve as the subject librarians for chemistry (Lewin), physics, and Materials Science & Engineering (McMinn). Questions or comments regarding collections in these areas, as well as requests for consultation or instructional services, should continue to be directed to these two subject librarians. Questions of a more general nature regarding library public services or the closing of PSRR can be directed to David Gregory, Associate Dean for Research & Access (dgregory@iastate.edu; 294-0447).

News

News

News 

Update on Library's Journal Cancellation Review

12-Oct-2009

On August 17, 2009 the Library began a Journal Cancellation Review. The project had three purposes:

1. Fund the purchase of new journals that will support new interdisciplinary initiatives or major research/teaching programs that have been re-focused
2. Offset the cost of "unfunded" inflation
3. Identify resources for potential mid-year or FY11 budget reductions

The period for public comments on the Journal Cancellation Review project ended on October 9, 2009. Thank you for your input. We are reviewing and considering the feedback that was submitted. The University Library will post the final list of cancelled titles after November 15, 2009.

Once we are informed about potential mid-year budget reversions we will make decisions about reallocation of funds for the purchase of new titles that have been requested.

If you have any questions, please contact Karen Lawson, Associate Dean for Collections & Technical Services.

News

SPIE Digital Library - Subscription Information and Support for Librarians

SPIE Digital Library - Subscription Information and Support for Librarians 

Open-access SPIE Reviews journal to launch in mid-2009 with focus on emerging topics in optics and photonics

December 12, 2008 -- SPIE announced today the launch in mid-2009 of the new open-access journal SPIE Reviews under the editorship of William T. Rhodes. The new journal will publish original, in-depth review articles on emerging and evolving fields in applied optics and photonics of use to researchers as well as industry innovators.

"Articles will serve both as valuable overviews of significant new technologies and as portals to the primary literature in those areas for practitioners, researchers, and students." Dr. Rhodes said. "The optics community has long needed a good journal of review articles. I am extremely pleased that SPIE is launching this new publication, and doubly pleased because it comes at no cost to readers or authors." Rhodes is a professor of electrical engineering and Associate Director of the Imaging Technology Center at Florida Atlantic University, and Emeritus Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology.

As editor, Rhodes will be assisted by a broadly interdisciplinary editorial board that will provide the expertise needed to ensure that SPIE Reviews covers the full range of topics important to SPIE constituents.

SPIE Reviews will be available as an open-access publication in the SPIE Digital Library, the world's largest collection of optics literature. Articles in the SPIE Digital Library incorporate features such as extensive CrossRef-linked bibliographies, multimedia, bookmarking tools, and RSS feeds. In addition to these features, SPIE Reviews will feature links to related resources such as book chapters.  SPIE Reviews joins the open-access SPIE Letters virtual journal as an additional open-access offering in the SPIE Digital Library, which also includes articles available by subscription or pay-per-view from SPIE's other six journals and the Proceedings of SPIE.

"SPIE Reviews will offer timely insights on emerging technologies of benefit to researchers and students, while also providing industry managers with overviews of developing fields and a front-view perspective on technology trends," said CEO Eugene Arthurs.

SPIE Reviews' open-access status will ensure its availability to researchers in developing countries and in schools with limited access to primary research journals, Arthurs noted. "This supports SPIE's mission to advance devierse new technologies throughout the world."

Articles will be invited by members of the editorial board and the editor. Proposals from prospective authors also will be considered by the editor. Proposals and inquiries may be sent to journals@spie.org. Additional information on SPIE Reviews is available at www.spie.org/reviews.

SPIE Digital Library - Subscription Information and Support for Librarians

SciTech Library Question

SciTech Library Question 

Perhaps The Final Word on Availability of Bulk Chemical Prices

.: As many of you know, I've been waging a campaign for the past three years with ICIS Chemical Business in hopes that it would maintain and update the bulk chemical prices from 28 August 2006, which was the last time these prices were published in what was then known as Chemical Market Reporter. Selected prices had been updated for 2007 and 2008, and I recently wrote to Simon Robinson, Online Editor for ICIS.com, and asked if updates were forthcoming for 2009. Simon wrote back to confirm that this will not be happening, unfortunately. He wrote:

As you say it is that time of year again that your students start putting their design projects together. I am glad that you find the August 2006 numbers useful. We did up date them last year, but as I am sure that you realise 2009 promises to be a very tough year in the chemical sector and also for information providers to that sector. As such we can’t really promise to update the numbers this year, or fill in the holes that you have found in the database on our site. This is because our resources are going to be fully committed elsewhere.

Regarding my ongoing concern that chemical engineering students are and remain ICIS' future customers, and that consideration must be given to them accordingly, he wrote:

I appreciate that Chemical Engineering students are the seed corn that will ensure the chemical industry’s success in the future and are potential long term customers for ICIS products. However, they are not existing customers, and if 2009 is going to be about anything for companies operating in the chemicals sector it will be about servicing the information needs of our existing subscribers.

I thank Simon and Penny Wilson, his predecessor, for keeping the lines of communication open with me for the past three years as we worked to try to solve this very serious concern.

I hope that you will understand the hard commercial reality in which we operate, as part of a multinational company.

I wrote back to Simon, and expressed my disappointment in his response. I noted that these bulk chemical prices are the only resource for access to such data for chemical engineering students. I did thank him for keeping the dialogue between us open and honest, and asked if the ICIS Students site would be maintained, along with the 28 August 2006 price list, for the time being. He wrote:

Thanks for you kind and understanding reply. It is tough in the world of business at the moment and like other companies we’re looking at our cost base. That said, since the indicative prices are up on the website now, there is little danger of them coming down in the foreseeable future. I am not certain, though, that there will be enough resource here to update them this year or in the future. I realise that these numbers give your students the feel of a real life project, but this year some chemical prices have gyrated wildly and almost no price indications would have given them the certainty that a project would be profitable by completion. .

We are unlikely to significantly extend the students site beyond its current scope. But we are upgrading our ICIS connect site which might be a good place for your students to interact and ask questions of the industry directly.

So while I'm disheartened with ICIS' decision to no longer update the August 2006 prices, I am grateful to Simon for confirming that the Indicative Prices page will remain on the ICIS site for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, we as engineering librarians will need to find other bulk chemical pricing resources for our chemical engineering students, which could prove to be very difficult indeed.

SciTech Library Question