My Atmospheric Inbox: Diamonds in the Rough
Diamonds in the Rough
It’s funny what can come your way from forwarded email. Someone takes a moment to consider the content of a message and decides you might be interested. Last month I received such an email, announcing that (at least some) of Dr Jules Charney’s reprint files needed to be removed and probably discarded. It was an invitation to the department to take anything of interest. Of course I decided to explore, and in retrospect, I don’t know what I was thinking. My assumption this would entail a couple of drawers must reflect at some level, our Internet Age. But I should not have been surprised that Dr Charney had 12 drawers chock full of publications from all over the world.
As in most libraries, we don’t collect reprints, but it was still a joy to see the names of world class meteorologists come up on the file tabs. I called our Archives, wondering if the tabs alone were worth keeping. Wouldn’t they translate into a modern day page in Facebook?
It was easy to time travel: to imagine sending these papers through the post and being filed there in the gray drawers. A very different kind of “posting”—no pdfs, no bibliographic citation software. Dr Charney used one way to recall what was written: who did it, and one place to find it: the files.
But gray drawers can sometimes yield more than article reprints. They also yield gray literature. Yes, although most of the materials had to be left behind for the recyclers, interfiled with the reprints were atmospheric diamonds in the rough…the very gray serial gems not many libraries have, or at least, have findable in their catalogs. Now they form a mini information science lab right in my office: how many pieces do we already own? Who else has them? Will they deepen our meteorology collection? In his new book, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Climate Change (2010, MIT Press), Paul Edwards writes
Gray literature…has considerable importance in meteorology and is often cited in journal literature. Yet laying hands on any of the gray literature published before 1995 is remarkably difficult. There are only a few well-stocked meteorological libraries in North America, and probably no more than two dozen in the whole world. (page xxv)
Now, as I formulate my strategies to process these items and consider how to make them more widely known, I will also have the chance to map out his professional associates, some of whom were personal friends. As I touch the covers of these studies, I can also build on my “wall” the network Dr Charney’s colleagues who once aspired, with this intellectual giant, to understand the inner workings of the very air we breathe.
On Reading, Poetry, and Atmospheric Science
My Atmospheric Inbox: On Reading, Poetry and Atmospheric Science
Have you ever noticed that the oddest, most random threads of our busy lives sometimes meet together in the oddest, most random places? As I prepared to leave the house on this very chilly morning, wondering what topic would form my final blog of the year, I suggested to myself: why not discuss some of the best books about our atmosphere, this year’s titles to review for ASLI Choice awards?
When we review for ASLI a mix of books always greets us: titles we own, titles we don’t (and won’t); formal nominations and books we just find; titles we can peruse in 20 minutes off the stacks and ones we must open online. Politics, technical material, visual compilations… each year the sojourn is a feast for those who can make a meal of appetizers. Usually one category seems to dominate the output, and this year I suggest it is this: popular books for the General but Informed Reader.
We know our citizens need to be equipped with a broad, accurate understanding of our environmental challenges. And although my companions in this train car should know, could anyone state the predicted temperature rise in the near term, or the amount of sea ice disappearing each year? As if to underscore the difficulty in communicating science so that it is absorbed by us generalists, instead of unpacking my laptop, I grab the issue of Poetry from my carry-on bag. There, Nalini M. Nadkarni, a teacher at Evergreen State College, gives me an answer.
Sciences she defines as from the Latin scio: “to know as thoroughly as possible,” and her research tasks are to “design experiments, gather data and report quantitative findings to my scientific peers.” She continues:
However, with the increasing environmental threats of human activities on forests…the definition of science must also include dissemination of information and extending a sense of mindfulness about trees to non-scientists…What other vocabularies might scientists use to engage the public with the importance of nature and the enterprise of science?”
She then explores poetry’s role, but even with this short introduction to her thoughts, I am content to consider again all the possible ASLI Choice non-technical books in my office, bags, and living room. They seek to engage our public with the science it needs to know. Let’s hope most of them rise to accurately portray the facts and weave a compelling narrative. Our Earth needs to be heard.
Climate Change in the Library
Two tasks have occupied my virtual atmospheric inbox these past two days. Woven in and out of the other work: meetings, finding geological maps, corridor but work-related chats to colleagues, drafting statements of resource needs, I’ve touched these two tasks multiple times, hoping each iteration is a step closer to their completion.
Many of you may handle complicated questions for atmospheric data on a daily basis. I wish I did, since this would no doubt improve my skills. On the surface, these sound so innocent: windspeed data in the Bahamas, number of frost days in Central Park, amount of sunshine in Cambridge, carbon dioxide emitted in China. We have an array of web sites, sample sites, satellites, and publications to help us find answers. Questions often require triage: do you seek observational data, or would that from a model work? Do you really mean all forms of precipitation, or just rainfall? It’s not a surprise that many of these questions stem from our users’ involvement in climate change research. But do users know the climate is also changing in the library?
The other task for today is to craft a message to my Department about the new Nature journal, Nature Climate Change. I am somewhat surprised not to have heard about this from someone, since already two issues are posted on the Nature site—despite the formal (?) launch next spring. I can’t read the Editorial published online 24 days ago, nor the articles in these two issues unless I register—why do I hesitate? But the page does state this journal is “much-awaited” and an “exciting new addition to the family of Nature journals.” This is sounding familiar.
I don’t have much time to solicit some views on adding this title, but I’ll try. At one time being in the Nature family automatically meant a subscription, no questions asked. But these are tougher economic times. Will I have to cancel another title to cover the cost? Should I/we join those who don’t believe in supporting another “addition” to this family? If we dig a bit deeper, we see that its antecedent, Nature Reports Climate Change has added no content since May 5, but remains freely available online. I quote from their site: “The closure of this online resource will make way for Nature Climate Change, a new journal launching in print and online in April 2011.”
So we come to the bottom line: it’s renewal time, and competition for new journals at our institutions is as tight as ever. Inflationary increases are not yet fully known for our supplying publishers, and we have to decide: can we absorb the cost of a new child in the house?
Climate change, indeed.
Evaluating the Invisible
Change is in the air here in New England. The commuters come pouring into my morning train with jackets zipped and bags in tow. Some of those bags hold the paper books, magazines and newspapers they will read as we wind our way into Boston. Others, an increasing number, are happy to pull out the digital versions of those same materials. Wired for a news podcast from yesterday or holding that flat-screened Kindle or Ipad, they are in the wave, not just on the front edge, of the
electronic books tidal wave.
In my atmospheric inbox today is the task of compiling titles of 2010 books for the ASLI’s Choice Awards that are distributed at the Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society. I’m part of a small cohort who sifts through nominations and independent reviews of titles connected to the fields and subfields of atmospheric sciences. Climate change titles are always heavily represented in the publisher output. We find the best technical, legal, historic or visual book and recognize them, their authors, and publishers. We like to review “title in hand” when possible, but these days, we grapple with “title on screen.”
For what kinds of uses do we prefer the physical version over the digital, and vice versa? Surely digital books ease the commuter load, although toting a stash of books while leaving the public library makes tangible the hope of relaxing by the fire with a good read. Later today I’ll head off into my stacks and emerge with my own stack, after which I’ll examine the prefatory and concluding material, illustrations, content, clarity of writing style and more for each book. But there is a growing number of titles that require Step 2: call up the bib record in the opac of course, but then click on the url and pull up either the entire volume or the selected pdf’ed (a word?!) chapters. I’ll try to gain a sense of the whole through examining the parts, remembering that it’s Springer who deliver those pdf chapters and NetLibrary who doesn’t play well on macs with Firefox. Hopefully the e-book vendor Ebrary will deliver the goods smoothly as will Wiley and Cambridge or others, but it does have the feel of a free-for-all. Except of course, we’ve paid.
Finally there will be that (unfortunately) growing list of books my library didn’t, and won’t purchase. In these times of budget reductions, I don’t have the funds of the past to fill in what I might have missed in the past 12 months. For these, my colleagues, interlibrary loan or the reviews themselves will have to come through. Soon we will derive a short list, and then the winners will live digitally in photos of smiling people, and physically in nice plaques that will fit into your case in the overhead bin.
So as my train and its readers approach North Station, this may be your last chance to nominate a book for our ASLI meeting in Seattle. If you have a favorite in whatever form, speak up— or send the link.
My Atmospheric Inbox: September: Bog, or Blog?
This month’s blog entry has been slow to form although the artifacts that inspire it have been riding in my laptop case for several weeks. As any academic librarian knows, September takes on a life of its own: we tackle orientations, instruction sessions with classes, reference questions, and other fall start up responsibilities. Today, however, I want to consider: is there competition to our AtmosPeer? Are we still heavy on Atmos and light on Peer as Gerry suggested over the summer?
The first card I pull out of my bag is for Springer’s ClimateSciNet: http://www.climatescinet.com/: we can Sign Up or Sign In and it’s easy to find links to an Event Calendar, Groups, Network, and others. 24 groups span a variety of interests; the most recent activity was this past July in Paleoclimate (9 members). I’m beginning to wonder if this, too, is a bit light on Peers. The Forum section states that as of August 31, the 400th member joined this 8 month old site. I search for a few MIT names but come up dry. There seem to be no Links, little discussion, three videos, no podcasts, and I conclude this, too, is fledging. The purpose:
ClimateSciNet is a professional scientific network devoted to those working or interested in climate science around the world. The network aims to bring researchers, professors and industry professionals together, enhance contact and communication and heighten dissemination of climate related information.
The other small, pale green card I have proclaims Climate Commons in bold letters across the top and these words: A networked conversation about climate change, sustainability and the Arctic. (www.climate-commons.net)
This should not be confused with Native Climate Commons, RealClimate, or even the House of Commons, all of which came up on my Google search. And the plot gets thicker. The url leads me to a bare login screen. When I examine the card again, it’s got the dates 11.27-06-2.27.07. Am I four years late to this conversation?
It seems I am. The first hit: http://www.janemarsching.com/climatecommons/ says
Climate commons was intended always to be a short term experiment with two primary goals. First to bring together researchers/thinkers/producers from a wide range of fields to contribute information/ideas to a multidisciplinary pool.
I missed the one hundred posts, 3000+ visitors a day and 300 comments. Why do I even have this card! Alas, my inbox.
I leave you all with this thought on a warm September afternoon. AtmosPeer is still an easy place for us librarians to talk together, and it strives to provide useful content. Shall we try to promote it afresh this fall?
Chris Sherratt, MIT Libraries
My Atmospheric Inbox: Where Does Data Go to Die?
What happened on June 8 2010
Today’s task took several turns before it was resolved; the rolled up data graphs somewhat larger than the actual, physical inbox. No author attributions, no journal name, no year…just the words “optical depth” and “arctic” scribbled along one side, with several peaks and valleys, and red colored caps covering some of the peaks. The branch library for MIT’s EAPS Department has been closed for one year, and we’re cleaning out the final files and leftover office bling. For now, I leave the data on my desk.
What was it about these papers that kept me from placing them in the circular bin? This was data from a now deceased, renowned professor and, no doubt, it fed the conclusions to an article or technical report now published. Where does such raw data go to die, or live again? And are the options different now than in the 1980’s when this was cutting research?
Happily the answer is yes, the options are different, healthier, and yet we need to ensure the portals and guides TO this data are straightforward to navigate. Are we able to safely land at a data site from the results of a search on GCMD or that newly designed by the NCDC?
But now fast forward, oddly enough, to my mid-day train ride home. I’m in North Station in Boston, about to embark on a half -ay vacation when I see someone familiar. Truth is stranger than fiction: this person is an older woman who once served as a research assistant to the professor/author of the data on my desk! What are the chances?!
I lose sight of her and wander the station a bit, wondering if this is how life goes for orphaned data. Then I catch a glimpse of her at the Dunkin’ Donuts counter, and she advises me to leave the graphs for her in the department office. She’s not at all surprised to learn they were alive and kicking in the library, and my mind wanders to what kind of use our professor would have made of the library, the literature and data tools of his day: printed books and journals, slide rules, planes and balloons to gather the atmospheric data, with paper maps, not Google Earth, to guide him?
In the end, this data will probably be laid to rest in an inconspicuous place, and only live on in the final publications derived from the facts they reveal. Now we find most of these publications at our fingertips, and hopefully these expressions are enough. But let’s keep talking about how we can ensure today’s data will be findable on our screens tomorrow, or just a few clicks away. We really don’t want to discard anything but the real office bling. What do you think?
Chris Sherratt
Double Check, Double Format, Double Time
MIT Libraries staff have returned from furlough, and I had intended to discuss a completely different topic for my first blog back. You know the drill: “I’ll just do this one other little thing first, it will only take a minute, and I’ll only touch the paper once.” So it was that I innocently plucked the RMetS leaflet out of my inbox, the one distributed at ASLI in January. An hour later, it’s blog material. Who knew?
All I had intended to do was verify that one of our book vendors was covering the new series Advanced Weather and Climate. When it didn’t turn up as a series search, I tried one of the titles listed on the flyer. Mesoscale Meteorology in Midlatitudes came up with the series title AdvancING Weather and Climate Science. An understandable typo if one might have been hurrying to get the word out at the conference.
However, the situation quickly became deeper and, as is usual these days, philosophical. Which format should I purchase? The electronic version available to multiple users was a mere $10 more expensive than the cloth. My e-book notification date was June 30, while the print version was dated July 14. Since today is July 19th, I feel a fleeting sense of being caught up.
But back to the problem of formats for texts. Obviously the e book will be available to all, 24×7, on the desktop, Kindle, or other hand held device. With this ubiquity, why would anyone purchase print? It’s not a collection of papers, so there is perhaps some merit in being able to easily skim and dip into the volume as a whole, or to get a sense of the author’s full take on the subject. One could even read it on a bus if one did not have a Kindle—yet. What are becoming the important factors now as we choose formats for purchase? What values do shelf space, processing costs, “skimability”, even sustainability hold when we come down to the decision as to which book to put in our shopping cart?
Today I chose to buy the Wiley’s Thermal Physics of the Atmosphere as an electronic book, wondering whether as I did so, I was shortening print runs in the future. I also chose this example as a chance for a quick email to the teaching faculty, my rather quiet, hard-working group. If they speak up, I’ll let you know.
I close again with wonder at how in minutes, our simplest tasks show forth the revolutions underway all around us. Unless I physically mark the shelf, no one will ever wander through the QC 880’s and find this book. On the other hand, if a student gets stuck at 2am and needs that discussion of thermal radiation, it will be where he or she is.
Furlough, over!
Chris Sherratt
My Atmospheric Inbox: Back to File 29?
This, friends, is a blog entry I have been dreading, but find I must write, since the information is going up on our MIT Libraries website. MGA, Meteorological and Geoastrophysical Abstracts, is on our list of cancellation targets, and it ‘s likely to go.
MGA has filled a hole for us all, but no doubt it’s been scrutinized by other libraries who are under the budget axe. My research into the situation here was painful. I didn’t want to put it up for consideration, but felt I had to, based on its low use and that fact that cutting it would save journal content. Could we, can we rely on the array of other databases such as SciFinder, CSA’s ESPM, Web of Science and INSPEC to cover the MGA scope? What about the unique publications MGA has indexed? Will our users go to these other resources, especially in an era where they want one stop shopping? The lines are short and the check out speedy at Google Scholar.
Laurel Kristick’s 2006 paper (easy to find on Google!) provides some information on the overlaps of MGA with these products. For my part, I felt a responsibility to take a fresh look at serials MGA covered that Web of Science did not, the numbers of articles in these serials and the currency of indexing them. Perhaps Christopher Reading (colleague, and MGA manager) and I should open this topic up at ASLI, take stock of the purpose of MGA and do what we can to save it in other places. Budgets are still down, and pressure remains in the library house to cut bibliographic tools to save journals. The silence of the users is deafening, and not helping the cause. Maybe yours are speaking to you?
Perhaps I’m at a back-to-the-future moment. I cut my teeth in online searching under Trudi Bellardo at the University of Kentucky. I even plugged the phone into those crazy phone cups at the University of Arizona and watched that big “terminal” spit out characters, propelling the user and me into a world of online citations. Now, in what feels like a snap of the fingers, we’ve all been searching independently for years. Has the time come to dust off that DIALOG password for File 29? Anyone have a bluesheet? Ah, of course, they are online too.
The time to Logoff is upon me. I’ve got to change my email and voicemail to an extended greeting since the entire MIT Libraries go on furlough and close for a week starting tomorrow, July 2. As I do, I feel sad that MGA, too, is poised for a furlough here. Perhaps we can find a way to restore her as a “first place” to check for this new generation. We remember the power, precision, and innovation of those searches. Now we have the Web, web 2.0, a whole host of new tools. How can we help MGA woo our atmospherics back into the far places she goes, places they may not know about, but places they may need?
Chris Sherratt
My Atmospheric Inbox: Journal Days Gone By
The Inbox task for today began with an email from which I quote in part:
The competent authority had stopped the supply of MAUSAM w.e.f. April 2009. In this regards, it is to state that the supply of MAUSAM will be made only on exchange basis against your scientific journal in English Language only, if any or you may subscribe our journal. The current rate of Annual Subscription is US $600.00 or £ 200.00. Kindly confirm.
As any well-trained librarian would do, I went to our shelves to reacquaint myself with this journal. The most recent receipt was from January 2009, volume 60. Inside, the foreign price was quoted at $288.00 USD, and this statement:
“… this is the only scientific research journal published in this part of the world in the fields of Meteorology, Hydrology and Geophysics.” MIT holds from volume 1 through 2009 of Mausam, with a small gap from 1993-1997 (anyone have duplicates?)
A quick check of DOAJ comes up empty. A Google search on the name doesn’t yield much new information on Mausam itself, though I find a picture from Pune, a colorful site for the Indian Mete Office; and the publications link on “India-Weather on Web”, which unfortunately tells me I am not an authorized person to access this page. So between this message and the lack of “competent authority” noted above, it’s time to decide the fate of Mausam at MIT, right here, right now.
The truth is, I regret this situation. We don’t have $600 to subscribe, and I am sorry that we no longer seem to live in a world where exchanges are possible , although this was one of the first forms of open access. I joined the MIT staff at the beginning of the end of these arrangements. The spirit of cooperation and sharing had been honorable. Information could be controlled, or so we thought. But staffing, budgets, and technologies have changed. Some information is free, and some not.
So the moment has arrived. It is with regret that I will be the one to lower the curtain on Mausam here. Our users will have to borrow what they need, so I hope some of you will keep your subscriptions even though funding and space pressures grows more difficult. I saved Mausam from our 2009 round of serial cuts, but I can save it no more. Goodbye Mausam. We will miss you and the elements of days gone by you represent.
My Atmospheric Inbox Featured
My Atmospheric Inbox: First find the Password
More than a year has gone by since AtmosPeer (http://www.atmospeer.net/) was introduced to librarians attending the ASLI conference in 2009. Proquest’s Gerald Sawchuk presented the idea of a social network for atmospheric scientists, one that might develop to also hold content and data. After surveying faculty, students, and others in the field, AtmosPeer was launched. And this year at ASLI, in a moment of I’m not sure what, I sheepishly volunteered to blog from my humble seat here in the library stands. Now the spring term has ended; I’m unearthing my password, and inviting you to join me.
My immediate community of atmospheric scientists here at MIT seems very self-sufficient. Because of this, I’d like to explore whether through my everyday actions, through my
“ atmospheric inbox” we can find intersections with the larger issues that face us in libraries. Can a blog help us converse and share information so that we increase our effectiveness? I think it can.
When it came time to write, I decided to approach this as a student.; after all, the empty Google search box was waiting. In just 0.10 seconds,
Other names appeared, already familiar to these readers no doubt: RealClimate (“the mother of all climate blogs”) Climate Progress, Climate Ark, Climate Feedback, plenty to choose from and only a click away. One could search Meteorology blogs or Weather blogs and soon get choked in the blogosphere.
But I am hopeful. The water, or air? seems safe enough to plunge in and add some posts from our particular perspective, even though information is saturating us too. I hope we can take the smallest atmospheric-librarian-related-task, the work that crosses our desks, virtual or physical, and examine how these serve as our own climate indicators. We want to understand the fluid mechanics of our world, the currents of change, and the storms along the way. Join me, now that I have reset my password!
Chris Sherratt
Atmospheric Pressure!
Welcome fellow AtmosPeers!
As we move in to our second month, I thought it might be worthwhile to share a little information on who has been visiting AtmosPeer and also reflect on where we may go from here – it would be great to hear from some of you on this also, so please reply to this blog with your comments.
Please remember that AtmosPeer is currently in the beta stage, so without your support the site may not make it past the Troposphere! Atmospheric pressure to succeed!
We currently have 159 members (up from 121 at the end of January), although this is not representative of the people who visit AtmosPeer since you don’t have to be a member to view most of the content. We don’t anticipate a large member base since we are a small group to begin with. Our goal is to build a core set of followers and contributors that will gain value from participation. In the month of February, for example, we had over 1,600 visits (versus 340 in January) with an average of 2.6 pages viewed (a drop from 5.4 in January). Most visitors are accessing the preprint articles and reading the news. We have just recently loaded the links to all of the conference presentations so we currently have over 20,000 document links on the site.
We are still growing since nearly 90% of the visits are ‘first-timers’. Of particular interest is that AtmosPeer visitors in the month of February were from 60 different countries (compared to only 24 in January)!
So drop us a line – respond to this blog or volunteer to host a blog of your own – or simply create a forum topic. As you can tell, we’ve had no participation on these two pages since the site was launched. Students, librarians, faculty or researchers – surely you have something to contribute?
Welcome to AtmosPeer (beta)
Dear fellow AtmosPeers:
We’d like to take this “blogportunity” to welcome you to AtmosPeer. As the name suggests, AtmosPeer is not just a portal to deliver information to the needs of atmospheric scientists. It’s very much about connecting and being connected. Share. Collaborate. Network. Whether you are in your university lab, delivering a virtual seminar, en-route to a conference or conducting experiments in a remote corner of the globe.
We urge you to visit every page and explore all the features of this web-site. WE NEED, AND WOULD LOVE, YOUR FEEDBACK. Tell us what you like, what you dislike, what’s missing and most important, what we can do to make AtmosPeer serve your community better.
We are also looking for interested researchers to host a blog on AtmosPeer – if you are interested, please send us an email on the feedback link at the top right corner of the site.
Sincerely,
The AtmosPeer Team
AtmosPeer Partners:
