#WomenInScience

Posted on May 27, 2020 by Marie Kennedy

At LMU, I am the library liaison to the departments of Physics and Chemistry & Biochemistry. Last year I worked through a review of Physics and Chemistry monograph titles for possible withdrawal from the library collection, as part of our Sustainable Collection Growth project. For that review, I used a spreadsheet provided by the Collection Development and Evaluation Librarian to determine which titles could be removed from the collection, due to the age of the material, number of uses from our patrons, or how many other libraries had the same material in their collection.

As I reviewed the spreadsheet for the Sustainable Collection Growth project, I noticed that the majority of the authors of the Physics and Chemistry books on the spreadsheet were men. I combed through the library catalog using subject searches for all of the sciences, one by one, to see if I could identify significant works either authored by women or were about women scientists. I also conducted internet searches for advice to readers of scientific content written by or about women. From those internet searches I was able to identify some “must have” monographs, and used my collection funds to buy those items. I am pleased to note that our library collection already contained a majority of those “must have” items.

To draw attention to the print and electronic content in our collection that focuses on women scientists I developed a twitter series for the library’s account. I solicited contributions to the list from library staff and incorporated their suggestions into the series, with one tweet per week planned for a whole year (50 tweets). Each tweet includes a brief summary of the content about what makes it special. Here are a few examples:

About Marie Kennedy

Putting everything into neat piles.
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