ELD Get Acquainted Session: Library Lightning Rounds

Jill Powell from Cornell – myiLibrary patron driven ebook purchasing.
Advantage: save money, price ceiling, selection criteria which disallows purchasing of popular books. They tap certain publishers.

Libguides Page for Senior Capstone Design Classes, Tom Volkening at Michigan State Libraries gets wide use by the students. May be using this with students/classes who don’t have library research sessions.

Ginny Baldwin talked about their extensive material deselection at her engineering library. Obtained load estimate in order to squeeze books in one area. They created a process by which they evaluated books and criteria for retention (see her handout) but they include: usage, historical use, local interest, value as  work, and classics. Consulted Books for College Libraries, and also brought in faculty to review decisions. For serials: duplicates with other libraries, online access vs. print.

Tutorials made easy with screencasting – Sheila Young from Arizona State shared insights on the library staff work to create online videos for students using Screenr. Demos, online courses, to support specific homework  assignment. They are also used for on-the-fly reference. See ASU libraries web site. It’s tied in with twitter.  See their article in istl.org online.

Kevin Drees from Oklahoma State teaches students about standards and specifications. Big picture: standards are as important as design is to the curriculum. See James Olshefsky article from 2010 ASEE on Standards Education Bridging the Gap Between Classroom Learning and Real World Applications.
A few useful links:
·         Standardslearn.org
·         ASTM – standards on campus, etc. check with Kevin for more.
Librarians’ role? Facilitate access to what we have in our own collections.

Jill Dixon from Binghamton University Libraries ponders the one search box ,which really isn’t always a one search and offers too many options for students. She looked at various web sites of libraries and fould 60% offer discovery tools. Four libraries using only discovery tool, all the others use multiple search boxes. What’s best for libraries? You decide.

Nancy Linden from University of Houston PowerPoint is your friend. She starts with evocative images to get students to discuss. She used PPT for small quiz type questions that are engaging, like a contest. She also has giveaways (1 GB drive) which gets students excited and into the activities. She uses a visual for high risk/low risk sources and the quadrants related. She also uses real life scenarios about being an engineering, which can illustrate why they do lit reviews. She tells students they shouldn’t reinvent the wheel.

Maliaca Oxnam updated us all on TRAIL the tech report archive. Over 772,000 hits over the past year. 993 reports were downloaded 89,600 times. This material is still heavily used by researchers. Coming soon technicalreports.org and winning an ALA Govdocs award this coming week! Congrats

Linette Koren Rochester Institute of Technology discussed their use of scvngr for their library. They purchased a license & a couple iTouch which students  can checkout. It’s an app from itunes which users can download onto their phone and they have set up challenges for touring through the library. BTW- There is an active hunt for ASEE in Louisville.  

MIT reorganization: Angie Locknar shared the new org chart for the MIT Libraries which is a new function based structure vs. by library. Research & instructional services (includes user experiences librarians, specialized content including GIS, etc.), information resources, information tech strategy, Administrative Services each with little bubbles which you can read all about later. See Angie for more details.

See Spot Run! Grand Valley State University, Debbie Morrow and the staff at the library in Grand Rapids, MI are celebrating a 10 year birthday party for their automated storage retrieval system (ASRS) named Spot. How cute. It’s been successful despite lack of browsability.  So successful, they are putting another one in their new library. Cool. Libraries. Robotics.

Najwa Hanel discussed another 10 year anniversary for their student written, peer reviewed magazine and her work mentoring and advising them.

I also talked briefly about our use of Twitter for outreach (see PDF of PPT): try it  & oddly, people will follow. Get students to help generate content (we have a Student  Social Media Content Developer). See twitter.com/WPI_Library

BioMed Informatics and Engineering Libraries

“Informatics: A Primer”
• Dr. Mary Lou Klem, U. Pittsburgh
• “The study and use of information and communication systems” – Coiera, 2003
• “Analysis and dissemination of data using computers” – NLM, 2005
• “Interdisciplinary study of the design, application, use and impact of IT” – UCI ICS
• Practice: informational and computing sciences (info retrieval, ontology/vocabulary, evaluation/research methods, cognitive/human factors and interfaces, database design, etc.) – Friedman, NIH/NLM, 2004
• Why such a hot topic in health sciences?
• #1 Information explosion – 16 million records in Medline
• 1881: NLM Director predicted geometric progression of medical publication – would require all those not writing it to catalog/index it
• #2 Growth of molecular databases – http://nodalpoint.org
• Librarian role: collection development, education/training, communication – Helms, 2004
• Collections: manage site licensing vs. multiple licenses - 05/06 estimated savings = $200,000
• Education/Training: workshops & consultations in use of molbio software/databases; http://search.hsls.molbio portal utilizing Vivissimo cluster software (tabbed: databases/software, filtered PubMed articles, NCBI genes/proteins, pathways, protocols, recommended articles)
• Communication: hired Head of MolBio Service with PhD in biochemistry, assistants with PhD in biology or neuroscience (and maybe MLIS)
• Search tools:
• Evidence-based practice – clinicians need to consult the “best” evidence when making a patient decision (prognosis, therapy), not what their colleagues or teachers said
• Best = current and most rigorous published studies, varies by type of question
• Few health care professionals have these search skills
• McMaster U. – developed “search queries” or “hedges” – canned searches that were tested for relevancy, accuracy, precision
• Therapy (individual randomized controlled trials) = “clinical trial” in Title/Abstract OR clinical trials in MeSH OR linical trial in Publicatio Type OR random* in Title/Abstract OR “random allocation” in MeSH OR “therapeutic use” in MeSH Subheading
• Prognosis (individual cohort studies or follow-up studies that assess morbidity mortality or survival) = “Incidence in MeSH OR mortality in MeSH OR follow up studies in MeSH OR prognos* in Title/Abstract OR predict* in Title/Abstract OR course* in Title/Abstract
• PubMed: Search by Clinical Study Category – etiology, diagnosis, therapy, prognosis, clinical prediction guides; scope: narrow & specific or broad & sensitive

“Bioinformatics and Engineering Libraries”
• Amy Stout, MIT
• “using computers to solve bio problems, usually on molecular level”
• “new phase in genomics - making bio discoveries not at lab bench but at a computer terminal”
• sequence alignment, evolutionary biology, genome annotation
• Data intensive - mining huge data sets, high through-put data
• Engineering: synthetic biology, sequencing microbes, computational neuroanatomy – circuit diagram of neurons in brain tissue
• Libraries: support researchers and students, data coming under purview of academic libraries, databases like any other (but tools require more specialized knowledge)
• MIT: hired bioinformatics specialist, created website, strengthened collection development, online tutorials, 1.5 hour session on introductory bioinformatics, expert speakers
• Entrez, PubMed, Gene, CoreNucleotide, BLAST (ex: gabra1)
• CoreNucleotide – library catalog-like; each gene has a “bibliographic” record, but also includes actual GATC sequence
• BLAST – find analog to gene in animals (ex: human) other than the one in which you originally found research record (ex: mouse)
• Gene – like review or encyclopedia articles for gene sequences – associated functions (ex: alcohol dependence, history of blackouts, age at first drunkenness, etc.) with links to scholarly literature backing it up

“Biomedical Informatics in Engineering”
• Sheila Young, ASU
• ASU: Dept. of Biomedical Informatics, under School of Computing & Informatics, under School of Engineering
• Bioinformatics (molecular/cellular processes), imaging informatics (tissues/organs), clinical informatics (individuals), public health informatics (populations)
• Bioinformatics: “develop computational tools for the analysis of biomedical data and systems”
• Clinical bioinformatics: “develop novel IT, CS and KM methodologies for disease prevention, treatment, patient care delivery, knowledge access”
o Medical record construction – loss of anecdotal data?
o Medical decision-making
• Imaging informatics: “develop IT and computational tools to manage and analyze biomedical images”
• Public health informatics: “systematic application of information and CS to public health practice, research and learning”
• Engineering – have done similar work for systems biology (modeling and model analysis)
• Computer science, physics, and engineering literature, in addition to PubMed – various thesaurus terms and classification areas
• New interdisciplinary journals
• “Publishing” the data, as well as the narrative

Q: Where does translational science fit in? ISI is releasing a database, new journals, NSF funding.
A: NIH putting huge emphasis on it, funding centers. Pulling researchers from bench to bedside and forcing them to talk to one another.
A: Translational genomics - personal gene reports.

Q: How do the canned searches handle changes in MeSH terms?
A: Assume McMaster is monitoring.

Q: PubMed vs. Medline
A: PubMed contains all Medline records, plus additional or more recent records, from a variety of fields (some may not get indexed) – engineers love how PubMed maps from one database to another.

Q: How handle the $200,000 issue?
A: My understanding is that the library took over the cost from the labs; there are more restrictions on research funding driving this.

Ethics in Engineering Education (non-ELD session)

[note: this session may be of interest to some members, though it wasn't sponsored by ELD]

Engineering Ethics & Climate Change
• Joseph Herkert, ASU
• Little written about ethics and climate change
• Gardiner 2004:
o Uncertainty = red herring: issue isn’t lack of smoking gun, it’s how we act in absence of smoking gun
o Not either/or – we have to take action to minimize climate change, AND we have to adapt to climate change that is going to happen
• Codes of Ethics as written aren’t the answer: “paramountcy clauses,” environment/sustainability, intergenerational equity (future), objectivity/truthfulness, public understanding
• Codes: written with microethics perspective, not macroethics

“Web-based Professional Ethics Modules”
• Byron Newberry (Baylor U.) and Greta Gorsuch (Texas Tech U.)
• Professional ethics and regulations vary by culture
• Includes intellectual property, plagiarism, data integrity
• Brought in an applied linguist
• MS Word statistics – writing to 9th/10th grade level = shorter sentences, limited vocabulary, embedded definitions [ex: ConceptTutor]
• Indexing software – substitute more frequently used, common words for more infrequently used, more complex words

“Lowering the Barriers to Achieve Ethics Across the Engineering Curriculum”
• Kristyn Masters (BME faculty) and Sarah Pfatteicher (Asst. Dean), UW-Madison
• Big, research-focused university
• Want to increase instructor comfort for teaching ethics
• Students and instructors more comfortable with numbers - measurable outcomes
• Sarah gets asked to give a guest lecture on ethics, to address ABET requirement
• Module in ethics problem-solving that is reusable
• Case study ethical problem, students given 20 min. quiz to “solve”
• Control group: full lecture and open-ended answer, expeimental groups: full lecture and DISORDER framework, b) short overview and DISORDER framework
• A) NIH constrains hESC strains you can use – not very good; b) Federally funded equipment can’t touch non-approved lines, c) Privately funded stem cell lines in lab next door, and they’re willing to share (?)
• Open-ended responses = 65% a) keep using crappy cells and not get anywhere with research, or b) steal cells – unsatisfactory polarized answers
• DISORDER framework (from “Doing Good and Avoiding Evil”) – mimics design process; undergrads do 6 semesters of design, so very comfortable – bringing uncomfortable topic into their comfort zone
• Framework inspired huge % of students with alternative answers, and increased # alternative answers per student; final solutions chosen flipped to alternatives; zero illegal answers
• Paradoxically, more structure = more complex and innovative answers
• Even a short overview had a big impact
• 19 instructors – positive feedback
• Kristyn – funded by CAREER award (CBET – 0547374)
• Q: What does DISORDER stand for? A: Defining the problem, and gathering the Information were the most important steps – what questions would they ask the client for a design project?

“Preparing Engineering Grad Students for Ethical Problems in Research”
• UT-Austin
• Many ethical research issues in news lately
• ORI finds research misconduct more frequently among grad students than any other group
• Online materials and 4-hour workshop
• We talk about rules of research conduct as if they’re immutable; but they arose from humanities-baesd disciplines – therefore, cognitive dissonance or unwritten rules that are discipline-specific
• Engineers are averse to quotation marks, even for direct quotes – but they’ll cite sources
• Grad student plagiarism at Ohio University – 20 years of misconduct – plagiarizing the literature reviews of other masters theses – followed the model for 20 years
• What is “plagiarism”? Different in engineering vs. humanities? How paraphrase a process description – “readers don’t want to have to look this up elsewhere.”
• Engineers don’t see “words” as their product (intellectual property) – value lab research over “book” research
• Grad students are thrown on existing research projects and expected to produce – other students have done the lit review, so they never do
• We need engineering-specific standards, and not just for the lit review: Collaborative authoring, selecting data, presenting data – “nobody is addressing this, except maybe BME faculty”
• Q: I saw a lot of instances of faculty treating grad students inappropriately
• A: My question when grad students get accused is always, “where was the faculty advisor?”

Plenary: Charles Vest, NAE President

Challenges of the freshman engineering curriculum

• 1967: how to make 1st year exciting, communicate what engineers do, understand business processes, think about ethics and social responsibility
• 2008: all these things, plus nano/bio/info, large complex systems, new life-science base, computation/storage capabilities, globalization, innovation, leadership, teamwork across disciplines/fields/nations/cultures, experiential learning (conceive/design/implement/operate), entrepreneurship, product development/manufacturing, sustainable development

The global engineer is...

• Technically adept, broadly knowledgeable, innovative and entrepreneurial, commercially savvy, multilingual, culturally aware, able to understand world markets, professionally flexible and mobile

Technology

• 20th century: physics, electronics, high-speed communications and transportation
• 21st century: biology and information, energy, water, food, sustainability
• Payoff from bridging the frontiers: bio-based materials, biomemetics, personalized/predictive medicine, synthetic biology, biofuels, etc.

1986-2003:

• U.S. declined: domestic R&D, scientific publications, S&E BS degrees, new U.S. patents, scientific researchers, new S&E PhDs

Industry

• “Venture capital is the search for smart engineers” – venture capitalist friend
• “Open innovation” – borrow best ideas from anywhere (Henry Chesbrough, Harvard Business School)
  
• Employment growth driven by small and medium companies

Changing the Conversation: Messages for Improving Public Understanding of Engineering

• Based on what works
• Engineers are creative problem solvers
• Engineering is not static – 21st century science/engineering/medicine interdependent, blending in new ways
• Engineering is about systems: nanobio devices to (aging) largescale infrstructure to (adapting to warming) earth itself
• Engineering is essential to our health, happiness and safety

Grand Challenges for Engineering

• Doable in next few decades
• "Advance Personalized Learning"
• After 17 years at MIT, I’ve learned: Making exciting, creative, adventurous, rigorous, demanding, empowering environments = more important than curricular details
• Innovation: CDIO (conceive, design, innovate, operate), UROP/UPOPP (professional opportunity in small companies), WebLab (run real experiments from dorm room), new schools like Olin College, Second Life, mega multi-player games, business plan competitions (how to communicate clearly), studio learning, computer-assisted learning, projects, experiential learning
• Digital resources for education: cyberinfrastructure, inexpensive/limitless memory, digital archives (JSTOR, ARTstor, Ithaka, PLOS, Google Library, etc.)
• Learning isn’t just sitting in front of a box and listening; role of IT is multidimensional; role of neural/cognitive science – more than putting books on the shelf, even more amazing things to do with IT – very fast, can be modified

U.S. advantage

• Rest of world is focused on engineering education as practical subject – U.S. has clear and unrecognized advantage within our universities that mix together arts, humanities, social sciences – adds component to thinking

Question: "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" controversy

• National Academies halfway through “America’s Energy Future” study
• One uniform document with technical and economic facts for each technology with likelihood of being major players – generation, distribution, conservation
• Pursued huge range of funding – no one asked us to do this – didn’t want to be accused of bias based on funder
• Taking on another study on global change, asked by Congress – state of science, adaptation strategies
• Everything may be okay now, but it won’t be in the future if we don’t work on it now – America Competes Act

Question: What can we do?

• #1: Urge you to talk to Congresspeople to keep K-12 education on the front burner
• #2: Local action on energy and sustainability issues in health and security context; get young people involved