Organization Monkey

today i was reading an article about how one library manages their electronic resources, from a technical services perspective. it had a nice workflow chart, which i studied intently. here it is (click to biggify):

as i scrolled to the bottom of the workflow chart, i noticed that the author forgot a critical element to the step she called “solve problems” (pointed out with a red arrow). here’s what she forgot to add:

workflow chart taken from: Combining Traditional Journal Check-In and Claiming Activities with Electronic Journal Initiation and Maintenance Activities. Xiaoyin Zhang Library Resources & Technical Services Chicago:Oct 2003. Vol. 47, Iss. 4, p. 208-214

One of the dreadful things when beginning a literature review is dumping your citations into your reference manager. If your topic happens to be electronic resource management systems, however, your life just got a lot easier. I’ve compiled the resources I used in a chapter prepared for the Handbook of Research on Library Electronic Resource Management, and I am pleased to share them with you. Choose the link below to share in my RefWorks reference database, via RefShare. You don’t have to be a subscriber to access these references.

http://www.refworks.com/refshare?site=020531065164400000/RWWS1A709865/ERMS%20handbook%20chapter

From RefShare: “Clicking on the link will take you to this database which is displayed in RefShare – the sharing module of RefWorks. The database owner has the option to allow you to print, export or generate a reference list from within RefShare.”

If you find these references helpful, you may send chocolates to the address found on my “Contact” page.

I took some of the language and organization from MIT’s author amendment and UIUC’s draft amendment, stripped out the institution-specific jargon, and created my own Author’s Amendment to Publication Agreement. Feel free to use it for yourself. Leave a comment if you have a suggestion for improvement.

thanks to my friend cathy, i am the proud owner of this t-shirt!

a few weeks ago i got the reviews on an article i had submitted for publication.  long story short, the decision was to revise and resubmit.  i knuckled down and read through the reviewers’ and editor’s suggestions, to figure out how to incorporate the changes.  the changes weren’t so much about the content, but about how to rearrange the order of the paper’s elements for a different effect.  after revising, using their suggestions, i ended up with a paper that was broader in scope and much more interesting to a general audience.  in the end the paper was  better than the one i initially submitted.

i guess i’ve always thought about the peer review process as a kind of test on my concept and methodology; i hadn’t ever thought of it as a collaborative effort on the craft of writing.  but without the suggestions of the reviewers the article would have only been interesting to a narrow audience; their ideas broadened the possible readership.  i’ll keep this in mind for future articles — the reviewers aren’t there to just judge, but are there to guide the process of academic communication.

from http://www.m-w.com

The Word of the Day for February 06, 2007 is:

metadata • \met-uh-DAY-tuh\ • noun

: data that provides information about other data

Example Sentence:

The word processing program also tracks and saves metadata such as the author of the document and how many copies have been printed.

Did you know?

It’s easy to find data on the source of “metadata”: the word was formed by combining “data” with “meta-,” which means “transcending” and is often used to describe a new but related discipline designed to deal critically with the original one. “Meta-” was first used in that way in “metaphysics” and has been extended to a number of other disciplines, giving us such words as “metapsychology” and “metamathematics.” “Metadata” takes the “transcending” aspect a step further, applying it to the concept of pure information instead of a discipline. “Metadata” is a fairly new word (it first appeared in print in 1983), whereas “data” can be traced back to the middle of the 17th century.

Thanks, Rosie!