- Email: [email protected]
Library services and the Web
Vistasin Astronomy,Vol. 39, pp. 41-51, 1995 Copyright @ 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0083-6656195 $29.00 0083-6656(95)00043-7
Library Services and the Web J. E. Holmquist * Astrophysics Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, U.S.A.
Abstract: Traditionally the astronomy librarian’s role has been to (1) select, collect and maintain the materials needed by observational astronomers and/or theoretical astrophysicists to pursue their research; (2) to organize the materials in such a way that they are easily accessible and retrievable; and (3) to help library users locate the information they need. The advent of computerized information systems hasn’t really changed the librarian’s role described above; but it has surely changed the format of the materials we select, whether or not we collect them, and how we maintain our links to this information. Computers in libraries have also changed the methods we use to retrieve information, and the kind and amount of instruction we must provide our users. This paper will examine how, in a very short time, the World-Wide Web has revolutionized astronomy libraries, and will continue to do so as the electronic versions of our traditional books and journals become more widely available and more accepted by library users. Keywords: Libraries - Librarians - Information Services - World-Wide Web
1. INTRODUCTION In his book Future Imperfect: The Mixed Blessings of Technology in America [ 11, Howard Segal makes the point that knowledge might well make people more hostile, rather than more favorable, to advances in science and technology that frequently cost workers their jobs or, if not, limit their control over their working lives. I am going to focus on the latter point: how the technological advances in electronic information services and virtual reality systems can easily overwhelm us and make us feel that we have lost control over our working lives. Think of the librarian dealing with event horizons and pgrep pipe more! Think of the astronomer dealing with truncated subject phrase indexes and gunzippedpostScriptfles! Think of the local systems administrator trying to deal with the astrophysicist’s and the librarian’s incessant requests for the latest improved, integrated and user-friendly upgrades! Nobody told me in library school 15 years ago that this is what a librarian’s world would be like! In his paper entitled The Increasing Role of Librarians in Astronomical Information Retrieval [2], Andre Heck writes: * email: [email protected] 47
48
.l E. Holmquist
“It is clear that we have entered a new age where librarians have a new attitude toward IR [information retrieval] and where scientists have also a new attitude toward their librarians.... There is now a new generation of librarians very active in our community, ‘new’ being not a question of age, but representative of these new attitudes towards IR and of various remarkable initiatives and undertakings.... [3] The time is gone-or should be-when librarians were considered as secondary clerks whose only tasks were to put stickers on books and journal issues, to check borrowing slips and to arrange properly the material on their shelves”. In his closing paragraph, Heck writes: “An important point concerning the difficulties met by librarians is to obtain the necessary funding for attending conferences. Directors MUST realize that their institutions could only benefit from having their librarians well aware of the latest developments in IR and involved in international ventures. This would also help in transforming the libraries to being dynamic entities rather than remaining in the current state of being largely stagnant repositories of information.” The importance of including librarians in astronomy-related conferences cannot be overemphasized. Several organizations, and I mention the American Astronomical Society and its Working Group on Astronomical Software only because I have attended their meetings, have made an effort to do so. Librarians, too, have made an effort to include other members of the astronomical community in their professional meetings (e.g. at the upcoming Library and Information Services in Astronomy conference (LISA II), to be held in Garching, Germany on May 10-12, 1995). I believe that everyone benefits from the resulting exchange of ideas and information.
2. l-HE LIBRARIAN’S ROLE I am not going to review here the historical role of librarians. Nor am I going to discuss how computers have changed the format of the materials we select and collect, or the methods we use to retrieve information. Rather, I shall focus on: (1) how we try to maintain our links to this ever-changing world of information sources; and (2) the kind and amount of instruction we must provide our users. 2.1. The Library’s Home Page With the advent of the World-Wide Web three years ago, establishing a home page became the means of organizing and maintaining one’s (often tenuous) links to the ever-changing world of information sources available on the Internet (see Fig. 1). Note that by steering people towards the AstroWeb database, whose URLs are checked three times a day [4], I have limited the number of links that I need to include and keep up-to-date. It is not easy to decide what to include (and of equal importance, what not to include) on a Library’s home page. I have chosen to highlight the types of information resources (e.g. preprints, journal articles and books) that library users traditionally expect to find in a library. I have organized them in such a way that the users are led (via the hypertext links) to the electronic versions available on the World-Wide Web. One of the problems of this organized approach is the difficulty of incorporating new types of information resources (such as those found in the Miscellaneous section), and thereby expanding the range of what people can reasonably expect to be available in a library.
49
Library Services and the Web
Fig.
1. The World-Wide
Web homepuge of the Astrophysics
Library
at Princeton
University
2.2. ‘Tool Time’ Tutoriafs
To illustrate the kind and amount of instruction we provide our users, I shall use the example of the Tool Time tutorials. After many years of waiting for all the computerized information systems to settle down so that I could teach people how to use them most effectively, I finally realized that the systems were never going to settle down and I’d better get started! So. 2 months ago, I initiated a series of Tool Time tutorials - 20 min sessions held in the Library at 10 a.m. (repeated at 2 p.m.) on each Tuesday the Department schedules an Astronomy
J E. Holmquist
50
bttp://afitro.princstcol.edu/-librarv/ttime;!.html
I
Fig.2.An example of a Tool Time handout
Colloquium (held later in the afternoon). The topics of the first ten Tool Times scheduled are given below: . 1) Using the Library Gateway to Access Science Citation Index 2) Using the Library Gateway to Access INSPEC 3) Using the On-line Catalog and/or RLIN to Find Books . 4) Using the NASA Astrophysics Data System via the Web 5) Using the Web to Find and Print Electronic astro-ph Preprints 6) What’s Good and/or Useful on the Astronomy Web? 7) Using the RLIN Eureka Files to Find Articles on Many Subjects l
l
l
l
l
Library Services and the Web l l
51
8) The AAS and ADS Electronic Versions of ApJ Letters 9) Using SIMBAD to Find Literature about Specific Celestial Objects
l 10) Using SkyView to Get Great Data via the Web I have prepared a one-page handout, complete with hints and step-by-step instructions, for each of the Tool Time topics (see Fig. 2 as an example). I give a copy to each attendee and also keep a set in a binder next to the Library Gateway PC for those who prefer self-instruction. Focusing on one and only one topic each week, and preparing a one-page set of instructions and examples, seems to be about the right amount both for me, and for those who attend.
3. SUMMARY Technology does have its downside, yes, as Cliff Stall cautions us in his book Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Znformation Highway, and librarians especially should read his chapter on the future of the library and the myth of free information. But I believe that computers have greatly simplified the search process for librarians, and the Web has simplified it further. However, as Stoll [5] says: “Good research, like good art, good cooking, good teaching, and good whatever, requires patience, creativity, multiple approaches, time and work. Lots of work”. No, computers and the Web will not replace librarians. Our role in information retrieval is to provide that human interface between the information sources and the person seeking information. As always, it requires the knowledge of multiple approaches and sources, and realizing that the role of the librarian is first to learn, and then to teach so that others may learn.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Jean Aroeste, Jeremy Goodman, Eileen Henthorne, Ed Jenkins, Sangeeta Malhota, Toby Paff, Emily Peterson, Scott Sibio, Krzysztof Stanek, my husband Jonathan and my son Carl Holmquist for their comments on one or more of the many versions of this paper. I am especially grateful to Bohdan Paczynski and Jeremiah Ostriker for their contributions, and to Donald Koepp and Nancy Klath for their continuing support.
References [l] Segal, H. I? (1994) Future Imperfect: The Mixed Blessings of Technology in America. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst. [2] Heck, A. (1993) The increasing role of librarians in astronomical information retrieval. Bull. Inform. CDS 42, 51-55. [3] Michold, U., Cummins, M., Watson, J. M., Holmquist, J. and Shobbrook, R. (1995) Library information services. In: Information and On-line Data in Astronomy, D. Egret and M. A. Albrecht (eds). Kluwer, Dordrecht. [4] Jackson, R., Wells, D., Adorf, H. M., Egret, D., Heck, A., Koekemoer, A. and Murtagh, F. (1994) The AstroWeb database. Bull. Inform. CDS 45, 21-25. [5] Stall, C. (1995) Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughtson the Information Highway. Doubleday, New York.
Library Services and the Web J. E. Holmquist * Astrophysics Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, U.S.A.
Abstract: Traditionally the astronomy librarian’s role has been to (1) select, collect and maintain the materials needed by observational astronomers and/or theoretical astrophysicists to pursue their research; (2) to organize the materials in such a way that they are easily accessible and retrievable; and (3) to help library users locate the information they need. The advent of computerized information systems hasn’t really changed the librarian’s role described above; but it has surely changed the format of the materials we select, whether or not we collect them, and how we maintain our links to this information. Computers in libraries have also changed the methods we use to retrieve information, and the kind and amount of instruction we must provide our users. This paper will examine how, in a very short time, the World-Wide Web has revolutionized astronomy libraries, and will continue to do so as the electronic versions of our traditional books and journals become more widely available and more accepted by library users. Keywords: Libraries - Librarians - Information Services - World-Wide Web
1. INTRODUCTION In his book Future Imperfect: The Mixed Blessings of Technology in America [ 11, Howard Segal makes the point that knowledge might well make people more hostile, rather than more favorable, to advances in science and technology that frequently cost workers their jobs or, if not, limit their control over their working lives. I am going to focus on the latter point: how the technological advances in electronic information services and virtual reality systems can easily overwhelm us and make us feel that we have lost control over our working lives. Think of the librarian dealing with event horizons and pgrep pipe more! Think of the astronomer dealing with truncated subject phrase indexes and gunzippedpostScriptfles! Think of the local systems administrator trying to deal with the astrophysicist’s and the librarian’s incessant requests for the latest improved, integrated and user-friendly upgrades! Nobody told me in library school 15 years ago that this is what a librarian’s world would be like! In his paper entitled The Increasing Role of Librarians in Astronomical Information Retrieval [2], Andre Heck writes: * email: [email protected] 47
48
.l E. Holmquist
“It is clear that we have entered a new age where librarians have a new attitude toward IR [information retrieval] and where scientists have also a new attitude toward their librarians.... There is now a new generation of librarians very active in our community, ‘new’ being not a question of age, but representative of these new attitudes towards IR and of various remarkable initiatives and undertakings.... [3] The time is gone-or should be-when librarians were considered as secondary clerks whose only tasks were to put stickers on books and journal issues, to check borrowing slips and to arrange properly the material on their shelves”. In his closing paragraph, Heck writes: “An important point concerning the difficulties met by librarians is to obtain the necessary funding for attending conferences. Directors MUST realize that their institutions could only benefit from having their librarians well aware of the latest developments in IR and involved in international ventures. This would also help in transforming the libraries to being dynamic entities rather than remaining in the current state of being largely stagnant repositories of information.” The importance of including librarians in astronomy-related conferences cannot be overemphasized. Several organizations, and I mention the American Astronomical Society and its Working Group on Astronomical Software only because I have attended their meetings, have made an effort to do so. Librarians, too, have made an effort to include other members of the astronomical community in their professional meetings (e.g. at the upcoming Library and Information Services in Astronomy conference (LISA II), to be held in Garching, Germany on May 10-12, 1995). I believe that everyone benefits from the resulting exchange of ideas and information.
2. l-HE LIBRARIAN’S ROLE I am not going to review here the historical role of librarians. Nor am I going to discuss how computers have changed the format of the materials we select and collect, or the methods we use to retrieve information. Rather, I shall focus on: (1) how we try to maintain our links to this ever-changing world of information sources; and (2) the kind and amount of instruction we must provide our users. 2.1. The Library’s Home Page With the advent of the World-Wide Web three years ago, establishing a home page became the means of organizing and maintaining one’s (often tenuous) links to the ever-changing world of information sources available on the Internet (see Fig. 1). Note that by steering people towards the AstroWeb database, whose URLs are checked three times a day [4], I have limited the number of links that I need to include and keep up-to-date. It is not easy to decide what to include (and of equal importance, what not to include) on a Library’s home page. I have chosen to highlight the types of information resources (e.g. preprints, journal articles and books) that library users traditionally expect to find in a library. I have organized them in such a way that the users are led (via the hypertext links) to the electronic versions available on the World-Wide Web. One of the problems of this organized approach is the difficulty of incorporating new types of information resources (such as those found in the Miscellaneous section), and thereby expanding the range of what people can reasonably expect to be available in a library.
49
Library Services and the Web
Fig.
1. The World-Wide
Web homepuge of the Astrophysics
Library
at Princeton
University
2.2. ‘Tool Time’ Tutoriafs
To illustrate the kind and amount of instruction we provide our users, I shall use the example of the Tool Time tutorials. After many years of waiting for all the computerized information systems to settle down so that I could teach people how to use them most effectively, I finally realized that the systems were never going to settle down and I’d better get started! So. 2 months ago, I initiated a series of Tool Time tutorials - 20 min sessions held in the Library at 10 a.m. (repeated at 2 p.m.) on each Tuesday the Department schedules an Astronomy
J E. Holmquist
50
bttp://afitro.princstcol.edu/-librarv/ttime;!.html
I
Fig.2.An example of a Tool Time handout
Colloquium (held later in the afternoon). The topics of the first ten Tool Times scheduled are given below: . 1) Using the Library Gateway to Access Science Citation Index 2) Using the Library Gateway to Access INSPEC 3) Using the On-line Catalog and/or RLIN to Find Books . 4) Using the NASA Astrophysics Data System via the Web 5) Using the Web to Find and Print Electronic astro-ph Preprints 6) What’s Good and/or Useful on the Astronomy Web? 7) Using the RLIN Eureka Files to Find Articles on Many Subjects l
l
l
l
l
Library Services and the Web l l
51
8) The AAS and ADS Electronic Versions of ApJ Letters 9) Using SIMBAD to Find Literature about Specific Celestial Objects
l 10) Using SkyView to Get Great Data via the Web I have prepared a one-page handout, complete with hints and step-by-step instructions, for each of the Tool Time topics (see Fig. 2 as an example). I give a copy to each attendee and also keep a set in a binder next to the Library Gateway PC for those who prefer self-instruction. Focusing on one and only one topic each week, and preparing a one-page set of instructions and examples, seems to be about the right amount both for me, and for those who attend.
3. SUMMARY Technology does have its downside, yes, as Cliff Stall cautions us in his book Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Znformation Highway, and librarians especially should read his chapter on the future of the library and the myth of free information. But I believe that computers have greatly simplified the search process for librarians, and the Web has simplified it further. However, as Stoll [5] says: “Good research, like good art, good cooking, good teaching, and good whatever, requires patience, creativity, multiple approaches, time and work. Lots of work”. No, computers and the Web will not replace librarians. Our role in information retrieval is to provide that human interface between the information sources and the person seeking information. As always, it requires the knowledge of multiple approaches and sources, and realizing that the role of the librarian is first to learn, and then to teach so that others may learn.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Jean Aroeste, Jeremy Goodman, Eileen Henthorne, Ed Jenkins, Sangeeta Malhota, Toby Paff, Emily Peterson, Scott Sibio, Krzysztof Stanek, my husband Jonathan and my son Carl Holmquist for their comments on one or more of the many versions of this paper. I am especially grateful to Bohdan Paczynski and Jeremiah Ostriker for their contributions, and to Donald Koepp and Nancy Klath for their continuing support.
References [l] Segal, H. I? (1994) Future Imperfect: The Mixed Blessings of Technology in America. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst. [2] Heck, A. (1993) The increasing role of librarians in astronomical information retrieval. Bull. Inform. CDS 42, 51-55. [3] Michold, U., Cummins, M., Watson, J. M., Holmquist, J. and Shobbrook, R. (1995) Library information services. In: Information and On-line Data in Astronomy, D. Egret and M. A. Albrecht (eds). Kluwer, Dordrecht. [4] Jackson, R., Wells, D., Adorf, H. M., Egret, D., Heck, A., Koekemoer, A. and Murtagh, F. (1994) The AstroWeb database. Bull. Inform. CDS 45, 21-25. [5] Stall, C. (1995) Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughtson the Information Highway. Doubleday, New York.