PLC Day 4 June 17

Well, I was one of Sandy’s colleagues left on the patio at Lloyd's next to the hotel on Day 3, enjoying the wonderful evening sunshine, and the company of our Alaskan and Norwegian PLCers, joined later by several other colloquy participants. Little did I understand when I signed up to blog, that Thursday would be one of the most intense days, followed by the banquet and the outcry auction. I therefore apologize that this report is undoubetedly arriving AFTER the report for Day 5, but it simply couldn’t be helped… I had a lot to cover!

Day 4 (Thursday in Bremerhaven) began with Session 6: Preserving and Distributing Polar Research – Polar Libraries Ahead, moderated by Sandy Campbell of the University of Alberta Library. The first presentation was by Ross Goodwin of the ASTIS Bibliography, Arctic Institute of North America at the University of Calgary, who provided an account of the concept, design, development, current status and ongoing plans for the IPY 2007-2008 database. The database, developed as a consortium model using existing systems, is unique in that it collects social data and gray literature, allows for geographic as well as inter-disciplinary searching, is useful to a broad audience, and that it contributes records to ongoing databases at the same time as it builds the IPY 2007-2008 database. It is now at 4,000 records and counting. Some of the challenges are in capturing the data, but the most pressing issue is the sale of NISC to EBSCO publishing, which means that IPYPD is no longer a subset of AAR, even though it was built to use the infrastructure. The work on IPYPD has really just begun, the records will continue to be collected by CRBP, ASTIS, and SPRI but a long-term solution to the NISC situation must be found. A request was made for us all to add a link to the IPYPD to our websites to inform networks of its existence.

Our second speaker was Gloria Hicks of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre at the University of Boulder, Colorado, who talked about how e-tools and communciations infrastructures are being used for collaboration in key areas of science. In the same way, libraries are using e-tools to disseminate information and for communciation between librarians and users; websites are adapting e-strategies for distributing information through web streaming, RSS feeds, podcasts; social network fora, blogs, wikis, and chat applications are being used for science-based dialogues; and finally science is finding ways of using mobile applications. Of examples described was the ‘Science on a Sphere’ 3d program of NOAA (see http://sos.noaa.gov/).

Session 7, Giving (Open) Access to Research Data was moderated by Marcel Brannemann of the Alfred Wegener Institute and focused on a culture shift, whereby the scientific community is beginning to embrace open access, having been pushed to share ever more and various forms of materials (such as raw data). First up in this session as Hannes Grobe of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Beremerhaven who provided a overview of the birth and development of the PANGAEA Data Library for the Earth System—a georeferenced data library that offers a brilliant way to handle metadata as supplemental data to publications. From the view of the datacenter, data must be electronic (readable) to be useful and available. Next was a presentation by Jan Brase of the Technische Informationsbibliothek in Hannover,Germany who described DataCite--an international consortium for data citation. He described library catalogues as agents of global cooperation with local representation.

Our morning was rounded out with a Panel Discussion on the possible roles for the future library in digital curation, and how archives, libraries and data centres can interact more efficiently. The panel moderator was David Walton of the British Antarctic Survey and panelists included Heather Lane of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Shelly Sommer of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, Jan Brasse of the Technische Informationshbibliotek; and Hans Pfeiffenberger of the Alfred Wagener Institute. Panelists talked about differing views of library directors, library staff and researchers, the role of librarians in data management, how that role has evolved over the last 10-20 years, the challenges to accessing information and training needed for these evolving roles, the need for librarians to be invited to share in the planning stages of designing data management structures and systems and how their work should be called upon to inform the development of sharing policies. A lively open discussion ensued—a good deal of it focussed on whether the title ‘librarian’ should be changed to something more descriptive, or more inclusive of these new roles where they exist. Several conclusions were drawn; amongst them, the need to promote the skills and position of the Librarian to provide competencies and training in areas other than those conventionally attributed to them. Also discussed was the growing concept of ‘embedded librarians’ being a required part of the research process (e.g., in the medical sciences). There is a need to design and develop templates for data management and sharing, and various professionals and users need to be at the table to discuss needs and information required by various stakeholders, and to find a viable way to organize the data to make management as efficient and effective as possible. We need to be able to articulate various rules of access for e.g., the medical sciences (privacy standards) vs. social sciences (ethical standards) vs. biological sciences (data sharing) vs. applied sciences (patents protection) to form cohesive templates that will work across disciplines, institutions, jurisdiction (a monumental task!). Contraints, as always are funding, governance mechanisms, trans-national perspectives and differences, disciplinary restraints, and international rules. The most important conclusion was that the term Librarian is still appropriate--that people know what a librarian is, even if they might not know everything that a librarian does, and so we should… “Keep to the Brand”!

We returned after lunch to Session 8 which dealt with e-publications availability and access. This third session was moderated by Sandy Campbell.

The first talk was given by Sharon Tahirkheli of the American Geological Institute in Alexandria who addressed the impact of changes in the publishing industry on the Cold Regions Bibliography Project (CRBP), exploring whether new technologies and publishing norms such as electronic journals and e-books, digital repositories have made producing bibliographies more efficient or if the cost and effort expended adapting to the changing environments made it at all worthwhile. The bottom line is that while some efficiencies have been realized in some areas (staff time), they have been taken up in others (programming).

Next, new colloquy member Yoriko Hayakawa of the National Institute for Polar Research (NIPR) in Tokyo, Japan introduced us to the journals and reports produced by NIPR since 1957. The institute has moved to open access for all journals since 2003. Yoriko also spoke of the launch of ‘Polar Science; and a new special issue of MERGE, the new library, and the expedition reports collection, and provided a quick demo on how to access these materials.

The last talk in session 8 was dedicated to improving access to gray literature in polar libraries by Daria Carle of the University of Alaska Anchorage. The presentation was based on a comparative study of gray literature collections at the libraries of the Austalian Antarctic Division (AAD) in Tasmania, Australia, and the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) in Cambridge. The duplication expected in the two collections was surprising low (less than 6%). The project also looked at using RefWorks and RefShare to link the bibliographies to increase access. A full report of the study is available at http://www.consortialibrary.org/blogs/dcarle/sabbatical

After coffee was the PLC Business Meeting, the whole which will be reported in an upcoming issue of the Bulletin. Following the usual business of approving the minutes and the treasurer’s report, we took a few minutes to remember Geraldine (Nita) Cooke who passed away on 25 May 2010. As a founding member of the Northern Libraries Colloquy, Nita contributed a great deal to the PLC through the 1970s and 80s, and even into her retirement in the 1990s. She last attended the PLC meeting in Ottawa in 2004.
The business meeting then resumed with the election of officers; a regular member needs to be elected by e-ballot in the coming months. Sandy Campbell was recognized and thanked for her work over this term as Secretary to the Committee.
A good discussion was held on the impact of the sale of NISC to EBSCO (outlined by Ross Goodwin and Sharon Tahirkheli, respectively, in their presentations earlier in the day), and whether there was potential for action that PlC can take in this regard. It was decided that for the time being, the project team of the IPYPD would continue to try to work with EBSCO at finding a suitable solution.
Finally, PLC was presented with a proposal for an EU Arctic Information Centre or AIC network at the Arctic Centre of the Univerity of Lapland in Rovaniemi, with a request for support. The executive committee of PLC has considered the proposal, and advised the membership that, under the current structure and mandate, PLC cannot take part directly in the activities of this proposed EU Network (it cannot, and does not have the means to administer funding or any support or resources that might be provided for involvement in such a proposed), and therefore could not be a part of the bid. A member of the PLC can be funded as a consultant in the project, and so it would be more appropriate that AIC approach individual libraries (they have approached some). The discussion continued on ways the PLC might interact with and/or participate in the work of AIC in the future. Based on the above, a letter of response will be drafted and presented to the initiators of the proposal.
The next PLC 2012 will be in Boulder Colorado! (dates TBA).
Members are asked to send in vignettes, sound bites, re. PLC 2010 and contribute your news and articles for the PLC Bulletin!

The afternoon session closed at 5:30, which gave us a short break before dinner at 7 p.m. in the Captain’s lounge of the Sail City Hotel (sometimes referred to locally as ‘little Dubai’!). As we exited the elevator on the 19th floor, we were provided a glass of sparkling wine to enjoy while checking out the outstanding 360o view of Bremerhaven with the excellent sound of the Carlos Montoya jazz band from Bremen as a backdrop. A wonderful dinner (with a wide choice of salads, fish, pork, vegetable dishes, and desert) was shared and the jazz band resumed.

The outcry auction led by auctioneer par excellence David Walton was once again a highlight of the evening. Eight items reserved for the event were from all regions represented by participants in the 23rd colloquy, and all great prizes indeed: hand-painted hankerchiefs, a map umbrella with a polar projection, a litre of maple syrup, a Sami necklace made of silver, a handpainted silk tie, and an Alaskan ulu, which apparently is much more affordable than a shower curtain — just ask Fred Presteng who contributed the highest price to the purchase of the Ulu. The great news is that the silent raised enough to support 3 participants at the next colloquy!
Day 4 Correspondent,
Elaine Maloney

Friday at the PLC

The last day of the Colloquy led off win three interesting sessions on collaborative projects.

Bridget Burke, University of Alaska Fairbanks, introduced us to Project Jukebox. This collection of oral history projects captures local knowledge and returns it to the community: "digital repatriation." Materials collected include audio files, transcripts, video clips, polar periodicals, and images. University and library staff travel to communities to give presentations, and elders travel to the library to identify and prioritize materials for digitization. Interactions with local communities are regulated by guidelines that require collaboration. An unintended consequence has been increased collaboration and trust between groups within the University library, who have been forced to work together.

Liisa Hallikainen, from the Arctic Centre library, spoke on a cooperative outreach effort of the library, the Arctic Centre's science center, the Rovaniemi Art Museum, the Provincial Museum of Lapland, and the science center of Metsahallitus (parks and forestry service), which are located around the same square. The organizations are working on a coordinated series of activities for visiting groups of 14-15 year old students around the theme of northern forestry. Students will perform some preliminary work in the classroom; also, all activities conform to the curriculum. The goal for the Arctic Centre Library is to help the students become more capable of using the library as an information source.

PLC Bremerhaven Weds. June 16, 2010

I've left our colleagues over on the patio at Lloyd's next to the hotel, enjoying the wonderful evening sunshine. This is the same patio where they have the giant screen and are showing the World Cup Games regularly. Germany plays again Friday, and judging by the parties last Monday when they won the preliminary game, Friday will be a wild night.

Today was our Polar History day.
Our day began with Session 4: Polar Research in Historical Context, ably moderated by Elaine Maloney. Our first presentation was by Reinhard Krause of the Alfred Wegener Insitute (our host organization)on the history of the IPY idea. Using many photographs and illustrations of early documents, Dr. Krause first described the polar research landscape as it was in the years that led up to the first IPY and introduced us to the most important personalities. I hope that the slides for this presentation will be on the web-site. It was so rich with illustrations, that anyone viewing it, even without the text, will get a lot out of it.

Our second speaker was Hans Oerter, also from AWI. Dr. Oerter talked about the legacy of Alfred Wegener’s work and the research programs that have been built upon it. Much of the work has been done on the Greenland glaciers. Dr. Oerter pointed out to us that while Greenland is 81% glaciated, the unglaciated area of Greenland is larger than Germany. The other striking fact that we learned is that while the ice is very thick in the central part of Greenland, much of that area receives so little precipitation that it is actually classified as a desert.

Session 5, Polar History – Examples and Methods followed with Sharon Tahirkheli moderating.
Tatiana Fridman, one of our two new members from the Kola Science Centre in Apatity Russia, gave us a history of the Khibinskaya Mountain Station, where the First Polar Conference was held April 9-12, 1932. She also described for us her work on the Special Edition of “Important Milestones in the Development of Science in the Kola North”, an important work which was republished in 2009. It is really good to have our Russian colleagues here and to be able to learn about their information environments, both through formal presentations and informal conversations.

I think I saw Hilary Shibata last at the Rome conference. Hillary has a unique perspective having worked at the Scott Polar Research Institute for many years, and having also spent many years living in Japan. So she is perfectly positioned to bring us the story of Lt. Shirase and the Japanese Antarctic Expedition 1910 – 1912. This Expedit Reseach Instituteion has not received much attention in the popular English language press as have other Antarctic Expeditions of the same era. Our Japanese colleague, Yoriko Hayakawa (and it's wonderful to have a Japanese polar colleague here) tells me that Japanese school children are more likely to study later expeditions, as well.

Laura Kissel, of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, rounded out our morning with an interesting presentation on a program for building curriculum packages with high school teachers as a way of increasing use of the Byrd collection. By combining carefully constructed step-by-step lesson plans with carefully-selected primary materials from the Byrd collection, Laura and her team created a learning environment that would give many high school students their first with polar studies.

This ended our formal sessions for Wednesday. We headed over to the German Emigration Center for a group photograph and then lunch. After lunch, we were each given a card with an emigrant’s name and dates on the jacket. The Emigration Centre is designed to tell the story of the millions of people who left Europe through the port of Bremerhaven. At four points, we used our cards to activate an audio file which told us part of our emigrant’s story. My lady had been a Jewish doctor, who, with her husband was stripped of the right to practice and in 1939, was able to get to England, and eventually to New York. (My European colleagues may wish to skip the following babble).The most striking thing to me about this experience is that the story is that of emigration. Those of us who are non-indigenous people from the Americas and Australia know the same stories as immigration stories. We are the product of the people who made that trip and survived. These stories parallel our family histories, but we know them not as “they left”, but as “we arrived”.

From the historical to the modern, we next hopped on a bus for a tour of the harbor. This is a huge container port and cruise ship dock. As one of our colleagues commented, it does look like something out of Star Wars with its multitude of cranes, bridges and mobile container movers that look sort of like four-legged spiders with containers slung under their bellies. Of course they don’t walk, the legs are fixed and on wheels, so they drive around in a bee-hive of activity, collecting containers, driving over the spots or stacks where the containers are to be placed and then precisely lowering the containers so that they stack up like building blocks.

Kudos and thanks to Marcel, who has done a great job of giving us different ways of getting to know and understand Bemerhaven, the work of the Alfred Wegener Institute and the perspectives on things polar from this part of Europe.

Cheers from Bremerhaven. Sandy Campbell

PLC 23 Day 2

Day two of the Colloquy began with a guided tour of Klimahaus Bremerhaven 8˚ Ost, a new innovative permanent exhibition devoted to climate and climate change. Dr. Susanne Nawrath, Klimahaus Exhibition Manager, gave the group a brief introduction the Centre. This was followed by a guided tour of the main exhibits, which include "Journey", "Elements", "Perspectives" and "Opportunities." The exhibits simulate the climate through a series of interactive displays. As we move throught the exhibits, we experience the climatic differences around the earth and learn about the many factors affecting climate and climate change. Visiting the Klimahaus was truly a unique experience.

Following the tour, we shifted gears from changes in the weather to changes affecting libraries. Lindsay Johnston (University of Alberta) presented a paper entitled "The Melting and Disappearance of Circumpolar Born Digital Grey Literature." She examined important issues related to identifying, capturing and disseminating "born digital" grey literature. Elaine Maloney (Canadian Circumpolar Institute) also spoke of collaborative e-projects between the University and the Circumpolar Institute. Participants broke into groups to discuss issues related to collaboration and the preservation of this type of literature, with a view of a possible e-archiving strategy for Circumpolar literature.

In the afternoon we shifted gears when Jan-Anders Diesen, Film historian (Lillehammer University College, Norway) presented a fascinating look at the very first silent films made of polar expeditions in both the North and South Poles. The presentation examined the earliest silent films made on expeditions led by Fiala, Wellman, Wilkins, Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton, Byrd and others. Professor Diesen brought this rare footage to life and we were delighted to hear the many anecdotes he shared with us about the films and their background.

Our host Marcel Brannemann (AWI, Bremerhaven) then presented two short film clips of relatively recent arctic expeditions. This was followed by the final clip, a humorous entry called the "Quest for the Golden Roll". This five-minute clip was the winning entry of the 48 hr Antarctic film festival submitted by BAS researchers at the Rothera Research Station, Antarctica.

The last two papers of the day shifted gears back to important issues facing polar librarians today, as more and more libraries have to compete with the perception that libraries are no longer as important to research as they once were. Alternate sources of information, such as the Internet (Google, etc.) can make it harder to make the case for the role of the library.

Jo Milton of the British Antartic Survey presented us with the results of a recent user survey she undertook in her organization. The goal of the survey was to understand the patterns of information use by her primary user group, namely polar scientists working at the BAS. As polar research becomes increasingly more collaborative and mulitdisciplinary it is important to understand how scientists in different disciplines use and view the library, as well as in how they percieve the information options available to them. Jo also looked at many of the issues facing her library in the context of reorganization and dwindling resources.

Shelly Sommer (Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder) presented a wide-ranging paper on how large-scale trends such as Web 2.0 are affecting libraries and librarians. Shelly surveyed varous Web 2.0 tools suchs as Wikis, RSS feeds, file sharing sites, blogs, sites such as Facebook and Twitter and provided examples of how these tools are changing the way people look at and share information.

Also examined were issues of data decoupling. Research data is treated separately from publications and there are often no clear policies regarding data and data management. Shelly ended her presentation with a look at the changing role of librarians and libraries.

Pierre Beaudreau (Departmental Library, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada)

PLC 23 Day 1

Greetings from Bremerhaven and PLC 23!  Our conference is being held in the Klimahaus, Bremerhaven's newest tourist attraction.  But more about that tomorrow – when we get a guided tour of the facility.  Today, we were welcomed to Bremerhaven from Dr. Karin Lochte, the director of the AWI, as well as the Mayor of Bremerhaven (can someone help me out with his name?).  We got a nice overview of the research conducted by the AWI as well as the interesting details about the history of the city of Bremerhaven.  After a brief introduction and welcome from PLC chair Heather Lane, we were treated to two key note speakers.  The first was a very interesting talk from Bernhard Diekmann, of AWI, Potsdam.  He gave a very informative presentation about permafrost and climate change, including the definition of permafrost and the impacts of the warming in the Arctic on permafrost.  Our next keynote speaker was Daniel Steinhage, also of the AWI.  Daniel's talk was called, "Airborne research in cool regions," and focused on the research aircraft of the AWI.  He went over the details of the various aircraft used by the AWI over time and the purpose and importance of the aircraft in polar research.

 

After a very generous luncheon, Session I began with a talk by David Walton called, "Antarctic Bibliographies: listing the literature of a continent."  David summarized a number of the various bibliographies of Antarctica, with commentary about the good ones, bad ones and those in between.  David rightly points out that many young scientists (and other researchers) won't use any materials that they cannot pull up on their computer screens.  As librarians, we know that lots of good material exists that is not accessible online!  The second talk of Session I was a fascinating overview of the "Breitfuss Polar Archives at SPRI: its acquisition and integration into the SPRI collection," by Isabella Warren.  She gave us a good biographical sketch of the life of Breitfuss, as well as the interesting path taken to finally get the collection of materials to SPRI.  Consisting of books, pamphlets and maps, Isabella is pulling together a comprehensive list of the collection, as well as working to make decisions about the best way to preserve the materials and make them accessible.  Finally, Session I ended with a talk from Fred Presteng and the experience he had in digitizing the publications of the Norwegian Polar Institute.  Fred explained that this is a work in progress, with 84 of 400 issues scanned so far.  He also described the perils and pitfalls of digital projects.  Though the scanning was outsourced to big companies, there have been a number of quality issues.  In addition, Fred pointed out the need for the same technical platform to be used by both the vendor and the library.  He also gave some very good suggestions and tips to librarians contemplating digital projects, including suggested file sizes for best quality, yet still keeping file sizes manageable, and advising librarians to do a little research about scanning before embarking on an outsourced scanning project, as this will make communications with vendors much easier.   Day one's session ended with the announcement of the William Mills Book Prize.  Gloria Hicks briefly explained the process by which the book was selected, and then announced the winner: Furs and Frontiers of the Far North: the contest among native and foreign nations for the Bering Strait fur trade, by John Bockstoce.  Graciously accepting the award on the author's behalf was David Walton. 

 

-Laura Kissel, Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program, OSU