From the Geonet mailing list:
CRL Events
Free for librarians and researchers at CRL institutions.
Webinar: Water Resources
January 19, 2011
1:00–2:00 p.m. CDT
A followup to the successful CRL/GWLA Global Water Forum, this Webinar will summarize the key findings of the two-day forum and discuss action items libraries and archives may undertake collaboratively to ensure long-term access to data and scholarly resources on water issues.
The EPA announced late Thursday that it will regulate greenhouse gases from fossil fuel power plant and refineries.
Here are some excerpts from the announcement:
EPA to Set Modest Pace for Greenhouse Gas Standards / Agency stresses flexibility and public input in developing cost-effective and protective GHG standards for largest emitters
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued its plan for establishing greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution standards under the Clean Air Act in 2011. The agency looked at a number of sectors and is moving forward on GHG standards for fossil fuel power plants and petroleum refineries—two of the largest industrial sources, representing nearly 40 percent of the GHG pollution in the United States. The schedule issued in today’s agreements provides a clear path forward for these sectors and is part of EPA’s common-sense approach to addressing GHGs from the largest industrial pollution sources.
[…]
The Clean Air Act requires EPA to set industry-specific standards for new sources that emit significant quantities of harmful pollutants. These standards, called New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), set the level of pollution new facilities may emit and address air pollution from existing facilities. The Act allows flexible and innovative approaches that take into account cost, health and environmental impacts, and energy requirements. EPA must also periodically update these standards to reflect improvements in control technologies.
The AP story by Merrill Hartson, at least as it showed up on Yahoo News, was headlined, “EPA moving unilaterally to limit greenhouse gases.” The lede said:
WASHINGTON – Stymied in Congress, the Obama administration is moving unilaterally to clamp down on power plant and oil refinery greenhouse emissions, announcing plans for developing new standards over the next year.
Let’s take a look at the facts here, OK? Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, giving the EPA the authority to regulate air pollutants. (It’s been amended since then, most notably in 1990.)
As the scientific evidence mounted that greenhouse gases caused climate change, the Bush Administration dragged its feet on regulating industries that produce GHGs. Several states, led by Massachusetts, sued the EPA. In response, Bush’s EPA claimed that 1) it didn’t have the authority to regulate GHGs, and 2) even if it did, it would conflict with other policies and agencies. In April 2007, the Supreme Court ruled (summary, full decision) that the EPA most certainly did have the authority to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act and if they are dangerous to human health, the EPA must regulate them.
So EPA went back to work and in December 2007 found that GHGs are dangerous to human health; they could hardly do otherwise. They sent the e-mail over to the White House, where OMB staff just didn’t open it! With similar shenanigans, the Bush administration ran out the clock until Jan. 20, 2009.
Now that we have an administration committed to acting legally and with scientific evidence, the EPA has moved slowly but surely toward regulating GHGs. They have studied the science and determined that there is a danger and now they are making appropriate regulations. This is how it’s supposed to work under our system. There is nothing unilateral about it, the AP’s hysterics notwithstanding.
Jody Turner, keynote
Jody Turner spoke about trends.
Youth today:
“Data is the new social capital.”
Empathy = Innovation = 360-degree design
Community: “If my town does well, I do well.” Invitational.
Have a personal mission statement.
Books:
4 types of online attention:
Value-Added Research
Amy Affelt talked about the customized clipping and alerting service she provides for her organization: what they might not have found themselves or didn’t know existed.
“Requestors like the attention. You read the news so they don’t have to.”
“If you ask, people won’t want it. but if you just start doing it, then they like it.”
Gets the major financial papers on Kindle now. Uses USB to transfer files to or from PC. Kindle has a “my clippings” folder. Can use it as an ad hoc flash drive. Kindle has lots of advantages over iPad. This is an area librarians can become experts in.
Can order an e-book from Amazon and have it downloaded to the user’s app (!).
Daniel Lee talked about the media monitoring he does. His boss needed info about women parliamentarians quoted in newspapers.
Content analysis. “Conversation audits”: social media, web forums.
Similar to cataloging; lot of data entry in Excel.
Concise writing, curiosity.
Search analytic software does facets (e.g., by author, by source).
Data visualization: tag clouds, heat maps.
Factiva, other media monitoring companies are doing these things now.
Qin Zhu, of HP, talked about putting information in context.
Case study: Finding publications by HP Labs researchers for the annual report.
Compiled from various databases, reformatted and sent out by e-mail, in XML, etc.
Searched by affiliation and date range, then deduplicated. Format as HTML, plain text, RSS, XML. Posted on library web site, bibliographic database, e-mail bulletin, RSS feed integrated with internal bulletin — with links to full text.
Contineud doing updataing to provide regular alerts.
Use RSS Feeds to get info and to distribute.
In context: Understand your organization and your users. Distribute info where your users are.
Best Free Stuff for Broke Libraries
Sarah Houghton-Jan of San Jose Library talked on this topic. She mentioned many specific tools, but I’m mostly going to list the types of stuff available. Her complete presentation is available online. (If your network blocks Slideshare, you can see a similar post on her blog.)
Operating system: Ubuntu
E-mail/Calendar: Gmail, Google Calendar
Browser: Firefox, Chrome
Financial: GNU Cash
Office software: Open Office, Google Docs
Typefaster Tutor
Adaware, Spybot
Free E-Books
Free Databases, Articles
Reference tools: Chat, VOIP, etc.
Software to pop up help info if a user has been on a DB for x minutes
Online meeting tools
Social networking: check if your preferred user name is available. Good for keeping your user name consistent across multiple sites, which other speakers at the conference recommended.
Audio/Video
Website management:
Google Translate
To find more, follow these sites:
Evernote: for saving notes
Card.ly: Vitual business card
Digital Librarianship: Web 2.0 and Open Access:
Edwin Henneken and Donna Thompson from the Astrophysics Data System talked about what it is and how it started. It’s one of the primary indexes in its field.
Started as metadata only, now full text.
Retrospective coverage of nearly every astronomy journal
Notification service available
One-box searching
OpenURL linking
“Private libraries” allow users to share a bibliography (for example, with co-authors or students)
Connections with archives, repositories, journal publishers, services (such as libraries, Worldwide Telescope)
2004: Indexed in Google
Now:
Restructuring system architecture
Improving user interface (facets)
Extending search capabilities
Enhancing personalization, recommendations
Incorporating semantic web
Historical literature project:
Including older astronomic literature that was not widely distributed
Books to microfilm to scans
Page where users can help index
Jeremie LeBlanc of Natural Resources Canada spoke about his library.
They merged libraries, web sites, ILSes (went with Evergreen)
Integrated knowledgebase: integrating library catalog into intranet search engine
Weekly bulletin:
Doing training on:
Web 2.0 librarian:
Linked Google with library catalog and GeoScan (NRCanada’s database of geological literature about Canada)
Linked GeoScan with Google Maps
Library catalog links to Google Books preview
Adding Value with Visualization
Liz Lawley did the closing session. As usual, she provides all kinds of food for thought. Her slides are on Slideshare. Her favorite links are on Delicious. So, I’ll just list a few high points.
Shoutout for the Tufte books.
Boing Boing’s Is the Web really dead? shows how Wired misread the data.
People are not necessarily good at typography or desktop publishing.
The Felton Report is a personal annual report.
What if we could get graphs of our library checkouts?
Panlibus magazine on library graphics (pages 14-15). More at www.lsr-online.org/vizlib.html
Manyeyes: Shakespeare’s favorite words
A bathroom scale that makes a graph of your weight.
Water Librarian's Blog 