Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 07:37:20 EDT From: Donald Rosenthal Subject: BEGIN DISCUSSION OF PAPER 9 CHEMCONF '96 New Initiatives in Chemical Education An On-Line Symposium, June 3 to July 19, 1996 Sponsored by the American Chemical Society's Division of Chemical Education Organized by: Donald Rosenthal, Department of Chemistry, Clarkson University, and Tom O'Haver, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Maryland at College Park. It is Thursday, July 11, 1996. I wish to thank Paul Kelter and James Carr for their paper. Discussion of Paper 8 is now over. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ There will be additional time for General Discussion between July 13 and July 19. >From 8 AM Eastern Daylight Saving Time (EDST) today until 8 AM EDST on Saturday, July 13 you have an opportunity to discuss Paper 9: "Use of the Internet in Teaching Chemical Information Courses" by Gary Wiggins Your discussion and questions should be sent to: CHEMCONF@UMDD.UMD.EDU or CHEMCONF@UMDD.BITNET The SUBJECT LINE can be useful in keeping track of various discussion threads. For example: P9 - GJ - D - VII. Potential Problems with Hyperlinks P9 indicates the message pertains to Paper 9. GJ are the initials of the sender - George Jones D - identifies discussion (Q for a Question, A for an Answer) A brief (less than 40 character) description of the content or discussion thread. Thomas O'Haver (University of Maryland, Phone: (301) 405-1831 e-mail: to2@umail.umd.edu), symposium co-chair, is managing the CHEMCONF Listserv and the World Wide Web site (The URL is http://www.wam.umd.edu/~toh/ChemConf96.html). Please contact Professor O'Haver about Internet problems. Information and Evaluation Form, Future On-Line Meetings and ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ General Discussion ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ On Saturday Morning I will send out an Information and Evaluation Form which we would like you to fill out and return on or before July 22. Also, information about a summer 1997 and school year 1997-1998 on-line meeting will be sent to CHEMCONF. The period from July 13 to July 19 may be used for General Discussion of any of the papers or of on-line meetings. Donald Rosenthal Symposium Co-Chair and Chair, Committee on Computers in Chemical Education Clarkson University Phone: 315-265-9242 E-mail: ROSEN1@CLVM.CLARKSON.EDU ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 06:27:53 -0500 From: Gary Wiggins Subject: P9-GW-D Clarification of fulltext searching I would like to clarify some things in Section VIII of Paper 9. Internet browsers routinely allow you to search the contents of a given document. Thus, the statement that "There is no easy way to jump to the section that caused the 'hit' when this and most other Internet search engines are used." is somewhat misleading. You can in fact jump to the appropriate point in a document by utilizing the FIND option in Netscape, for example, rather than having to scan the entire document, as implied in the paper. In the examples given in this section, the terms listed between the double quotation marks were intended to be searched in the fulltext search engine WITHOUT the quote marks. However, I have found that inclusion of the quote marks with no Boolean operator actually yields a proximity search. Thus, inputting "chemical business" with the quote marks results in a proximity search that returns only one document. At the time this paper was written, I did not know that such a search was possible. Gary Wiggins Indiana University Chemistry Library wiggins@indiana.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 06:38:15 -0500 From: Gary Wiggins Subject: P9-GW-A-DR-I Use of my materials in other courses >1. You have devoted a lot of time and effort to develop materials > which would be invaluable to others teaching Chemical Literature > Courses. >a. Are other schools using your materials? I am not aware of any other schools that are using the Internet materials developed at Indiana University to teach chemical information at their institutions. >b. Are students at other schools effectively taking your courses? A few students outside Bloomington have contacted me indicating that they are following along with the lessons. Gary Wiggins Indiana University Chemistry Library wiggins@indiana.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 07:27:32 -0500 From: Gary Wiggins Subject: P9-GW-A-DR-II Library problems >2. Providing adequate library resources is a problem for many schools > because of the rapid increase in the amount of information available, > budgetary constraints and space limitations in libraries. > Do you have any insights about how these problems might be solved? Massive cancellations of subscriptions to journals and expensive continuing reference tools have tended to homogenize the chemistry collections at most colleges and universities. From 1967/68 through 1995/96, the Chemistry Library at Indiana University canceled 447 serial titles. Since 1979/80, over $140,000 worth of chemistry titles were eliminated. The stock library solution is to move to a so-called model of "access" to information as opposed to local "ownership" of the materials. Librarians are encouraged to cooperate with their peers in library consortia in order to save money by sharing the costs of the expensive scientific materials. However, there is a real flaw in this approach--the time it takes to obtain the needed copies of materials from library partners or commercial document providers. While the Internet offers some hope of a solution to the problem of slow response time, the reality is that we are entering a painful transition period from print to electronic sources of information, a period that is likely to see an exacerbation of the problem of inadequate library budgets as a dual system must be supported for some years to come. Based on my experience in dealing with these problems for over two decades as Head of the Indiana University Chemistry Library, I offer these suggestions: 1. Make all payments for scientific serials at your library from a single fund, and do not tie the purchase of books to how much you are spending on scientific journals. A favorite ploy of library administrators is to divide the serials funds into many little pots, link them to the individual book funds, and insist that each "fund manager" live within the assigned budget. It is much easier to deal with an overflowing budget when holding one large pot than trying to shunt the problem into a lot of little pots. 2. Decide now if you still have multiple copies of scientific journals on your campus which holding library will be the archival location if it is ever necessary to cancel all but one copy. These negotiations are best done without the added pressure of a budget crisis. 3. Try to get your administration to agree that there is a core collection of scientific materials that must be purchased at all costs. Work hard to identify the actual costs of that core collection, and get the administrators to promise to treat those cost increases as they would utility cost increases. After all, they would not propose disconnecting light bulbs to save on the electric bill if the level of lighting would fall below that necessary to read by, would they? Start by filtering out those things that you would never consider cancelling and put those into a single fund. We do this at IUB with the Science Reference Fund, which pays for items such as _Chemical Abstracts_, _Biological Abstracts_, etc. We also have a single fund to support the Science Book Approval Plan, the fund that pays for all new books from a defined list of publishers in a subject profile established by the science librarians. This fund is not tied to serial purchases in the science libraries. Discuss the concept of a core chemistry collection with your chemistry chairman. The chairmen of the various departments tend to share information about library budgets using really flawed data. For example, if I tell my chairman that the chemistry fund at IU has $XXX,XXX dollars in it, is that comparable to the University of Illinois's chemistry fund of $YYY,YYY? Of course not, because of the complicating factors listed above: a different fund pays for chemistry books at IU, yet another for university press books, a third for science reference materials, and so on. Comparisons of this type are only valid when you know exactly what materials are being purchased with the money. 4. Be open and honest about the really highest priority departments or subject areas at your institution, and decide how that translates into support of the library budget. I have suggested that the distinction between the highest and next level of support be based on these assumptions: a. No faculty in any department or subject area can expect to find 100 percent of the needed material in their library today. b. Faculty in the highest supported areas should expect that 90 percent of their needs would be met by on-site materials. c. Lesser supported areas should find 75 percent of their needs being met by on-site materials. d. No distinction should be made in the level of support or priority extended to faculty when material must be acquired ("accessed") through a document delivery service. Give the same rapid service to all. 5. Read carefully the license agreements for the new electornic journals, and try not to give up any rights you now have with respect to reproduction of copyrighted materials. (Most don't allow the electronic versions to be used for interlibrary loan, for example.) Utilize library consortia wherever possible to win favorable rates for flat-rate subscriptions to electronic journals or databases. The most popular electronic service ever introduced at IU is the Beilstein CrossFire system, for which we pay a flat fee through a library consortium called the CIC. This is a new area for both publishers and libraries in the US, but other areas of the world, notably Britain, have had good success in negotiating flat-rate services for institutions in library consortia. This question has taken us rather far afield from the topic of chemical information instruction on the Internet, but it's been fun to answer! Gary Wiggins Indiana University Chemistry Library wiggins@indiana.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 12:51:46 -0500 From: CHEMISTRY Subject: P9-GM-D Web site Maintanence? One of the best features of a web site is the ability to hyper-link to external databases and other information sources. Such addresses change from time to time, however, and must be re-checked by the site manager. I have found that students become quite upset if the hyperlinks in an instructional site don't work. They are used to using applicances that are on-off and don't require tweaking. The same thing applies to use of instruments, such as an atomic absorption spectrometer, that has several controls that must be optimized, before use. Do you have a schedule (or software) that you follow to make sure your hyperlinks are all still current? ************************************************ Gerald Morine, Chemistry Dept., Bemidji State University, Bemidji, Minnesota 56601-2699 USA gmchem@vax1.bemidji.msus.edu http://bsuweb.bemidji.msus.edu/~chemdept/home.html ************************************************ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 15:47:55 -0500 From: Gary Wiggins Subject: P9-GW-A-GM Web site Maintanence > One of the best features of a web site is the ability > to hyper-link to external databases and other information > sources. Such addresses change from time to time, however, > and must be re-checked by the site manager. > > Do you have a schedule (or software) that you follow > to make sure your hyperlinks are all still current? I have been doing the checking the old-fashioned way, checking each connection manually just before the time the lesson is scheduled. It is amazing how often URLs change. Some of the people working for me on another project have used software packages to check links. We got mixed results with MomSpider, but the person who used webxref seemed to be pleased with it. I may give it a try one of these days. Gary Wiggins Indiana University Chemistry Library wiggins@indiana.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 17:01:26 -0400 From: Brian Tissue Subject: Re: P9-GW-A-GM Web site Maintanence >> One of the best features of a web site is the ability >> to hyper-link to external databases and other information >> sources. Such addresses change from time to time, however, >> and must be re-checked by the site manager. >> >> Do you have a schedule (or software) that you follow >> to make sure your hyperlinks are all still current? > >I have been doing the checking the old-fashioned way, checking each >connection manually just before the time the lesson is scheduled. It is >amazing how often URLs change. > >Some of the people working for me on another project have used software >packages to check links. We got mixed results with MomSpider, but the >person who used webxref seemed to be pleased with it. I may give it a >try one of these days. > >Gary Wiggins >Indiana University Chemistry Library >wiggins@indiana.edu > Yahoo has a list of checkers at: http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Software/Data_Formats/HTML/Valid ation_Checkers/ I've used GNNPress before and it seemed to do a pretty good job at link checking: http://www.tools.gnn.com/press/index.html Brian Tissue Virginia Tech tissue@vt.edu ------------------------------