Check Us Out: Librarians as Departmental PR Agents

Donna WrublewskiMichelle Leonard

University of FloridaMarston Science Library

Schema of the Process of problem solving by Marcel Douwe Dekker. Based on Sol, HG (1984). "The Emerging Role of Simulation Based Inquiry Systems for Decision Support". In: Beyond Productivity: Information systems development for organizational effectiveness. Th.M.A. Bemelmans (ed.). 1984.

Tall Chris, http://www.flickr.com/photos/tallchris/14288135/ Jerry Silfwer, http://www.flickr.com/photos/doktorspinn/3092271251/

Why Us?

• Budget constraints in departments• We know people and how to find things• We live off of literature searching and

information gathering!– Department publication lists– Tools for rapid data-gathering and analysis– Using Institutional resources (such as Institutional

Repositories) and understanding publication policies to promote departments

The Right Kind of Info• Chemistry Department Publication Lists– Faculty member redid site design– Wanted to keep things “up-to-date”– Workflow: SciFinder KMP Alerts, RefWorks– Add info: DOI links, links to full text, highlight

Open Access publications• Effect?– Faculty member happy =)– Stats: redesign at the same time, de-convolute– Demo

“You need what by when?”• While I was at last Fall’s ACS (Monday Aug. 23rd)….

Thank you very much for offering your assistance in data collection for the upcoming Engineering Chair's retreat. I'm looking for data to compare Chemical Engineering programs in the following schools: (list of 6 schools)Comparisons: # of peer-reviewed journal articles in last five years, # citations to papers that were published in last five years, Average journal impact factor of all papers published in last five years

I'm also looking for any measures to compare the following items:"leadership in field" - (e.g., # Fellows of AICHE, APS, or ACS; # of NAE/NAS memberships) "impact on industry (workforce, tech transfer)" -- (e.g. number of patents in last five years)

I need to include this data in a presentation scheduled for Aug 31, so anything you can provide or point me to by the weekend would be most helpful.

A Team Effort• Michelle Leonard, Denise Bennett, cell phones and emails• Rapidly identify appropriate sources for data, division of labor• Articles & citations, patents, good old fashioned datamining

from websites (ACS, etc…)

Full case study to be published in forthcoming issue of Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship

Fast procedure in case we started getting similar requests from other departments

What’s appropriate information for a study like this?

How Your University LibraryCan Help You

• Open Access Journals– Explaining the benefit of OA publishing– UF provides funding assistance for OA-accepted journals

• Understanding Self-Archiving– Publisher policies– Institutional Repository can benefit publication visibility

(demo)– Resistance: don’t understand policies, IR submittal may

be more work– Pushback: No one wants an outdated website – that

doesn’t appeal to new students/faculty

Librarians As…• Librarian as organizer: propose solutions• Librarian as marketer: know what tools are

available for promotion• Librarian as PR: make your departments look

good! Social media representation, etc.

We are the ones who tie Everything Together…We Are Everywhere!!!

Classes, ListServs, Labs, Group Meetings, Department Meetings, LibGuides, Orientations, Training Sessions, SOCIAL MEDIA…